


fever in, fever out

by alexaskolnick (josiebelladonna)



Category: Anthrax (US Band), Bandom, Testament (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Romance, Artists, Cheating, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Did I mention this is a slow burn, Dorks in Love, Double Life, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Erotica, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, First Crush, First Meetings, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Heavy Angst, In Media Res, Long-Distance Relationship, Long-Term Relationship(s), Male-Female Friendship, Secret Crush, Secret Relationship, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, So much angst, Supernatural Elements, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Threesome - F/M/M, just joey and alex being dorks most of the time, so much angst that even the author is in agony too, so slow it’s like a dormant volcano
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:02:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29647575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josiebelladonna/pseuds/alexaskolnick
Summary: that nobody you met turns out to be somebody, and then that same somebody turns into somebody important. and then it all bursts into flames.or at least, that's how samantha saw it, living a double life as an artist engaged to a man, while her heart belonged to two other men she had drawn and befriended through their mutual love of art. there's only one whom she'll go back to, and the other she'll always have on her mind.books:fever in, fever out (split into two parts: altitudes and attitude, and deadly nightshade)burn (two parts: a skeleton in the closet and souls of black)smoldering (three parts: veritas, the ballad, and the ritual)torches (two parts: power drunk majesty and return to serenity)
Relationships: Alex Skolnick/Original Female Character, Joey Belladonna/Original Female Character





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> believe it or not, this is actually inspired by things that have happened to me.  
> i'm sure you all know i had joey talk about me and my art on jamey jasta's podcast last april, the week of my birthday no less, and on january 7, the day after the insurrection, alex was shattered, for lack of a better word. and i told him that he did the best he could and it was hard for me, too. and if i recall correctly, i told him the thing i've been telling myself since the pandemic started: "everything's going to be okay." and he acknowledged that.  
> then i drew him, too. and he reposted it on his ig - the day before valentine's day no less (really, go to alex's insta to february 13, you'll see what i mean). and he and i have been joking around with each other since then.  
> so this is just me writing about two guys i have a crush on because i got to thinking about it last night: "you know, this whole thing between the two of them is starting to feel like an ot3 fic." it was initially just a joke, but... here i am!  
> of course, i penned the artist after my encounters with joey, but now it's like, i have these two guys whom i'm crushing on hard instead of just me writing about a girl hanging out with a bunch of boys in the wake of everything going to hell. that said, i guess you could call this the follow up to the artist? similar theme with our lead being an artist, but instead of an ensemble of guys, there's just two of them. holly was also a teenager whereas sam's a little older.
> 
> this is also the first entry into the testament tag here on ao3 - on wattpad, i have coffin breaks, which also features alex, but that one's going to be way shorter than this beastie. this is one of those things i'm foreseeing all the way to the very end, so yes: i'm feeling this one going long. it's a long time coming for me, too: i haven't written anything over 80k since book one of now it's dark; i came close with the second amped and wired but no cigar as they say. i'm glad alex showed up because i felt like i was running dry, if the dead of night is anything to go by.
> 
> because i'm doing other stuff like my webcomic, i'll be updating this one every other day so i'm not overwhelmed.
> 
> anyways, enough chit-chat. welcome to fever in, fever out! named for a record from a one-wonder from the 90s, luscious jackson (they did a cool song called "naked eye" that i've loved for years).
> 
>  _"designer pussy, my shit come in flavors;  
>  high-class taste got to spend paper.  
> lick me right the first time or you gotta do it over,  
> like it's rehearsal for a tootsie commercial."_  
> -"how many licks?", li'l kim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> chapter one of book one (altitudes and attitude).  
> let’s... see where this goes.

“I need to get out of here.”

She watched the waves move in from Lake Elsinore from underneath her porch. The city by the lake that she had grown up in and loved so much had proven to be one to feel like a chokehold on her. The hot California sun beat down on her feathery jet black hair: within time, it would prove to be too hot and uncomfortable to even so much as have a drink for herself there. And she would have to resort back to that hot house with the kids and also Bill.

The lake appeared cold and glassy, even with the gentle breeze from the mountains across the way. A thought ran through her mind, one that told her to go down to the waters for a little swim.

Her name was Samantha. She walked about the streets with her handbag down below her belt and a look on her face that made one think of a mad woman in the attic. She had her brushes in the front pocket there and a handful of paints in the neighboring pocket, and she managed to cover it all up with her wedding band and the fact she was a mother all the while.

She had returned there about six months before. It was kind of the odd move to return to the other side of the country when she had everything going for her back in New York City.

She was the kind of person a passerby would see and never ask her of anything pertaining to her art. Sam Shelley was everyone’s mom, not everyone’s artist, especially upon returning to the West Coast, even as she took a seat on the beach to paint whatever came to mind. It was the only way she could relax away from the marriage that was crumbling before her very eyes and the two children she felt disconnected from—they weren’t even hers to begin with anyway, especially since they lacked her olive complexion courtesy of the Mediterranean.

She had met Bill on one side of New York City, away from their wondering eyes, and thus she could never tell them about him. And she could never tell him about the two of them.

And yet the Big Apple was where everything had come to fruition for her. Those two guys were the cherry on top for her.

For the past couple of weeks, she wished to leave the Golden Empire behind and run off to New York State and be closer to the two of them. Her “bad boyfriends”, as she called them. She smiled at the thought of both of them. The way in which she met the two of them almost felt like that of a fairy tale. They both seemed like opposites to one another when she thought about even so much as sitting in between them.

The one to her left with his jet black curls down past his shoulders and his large brown eyes. He seemed like the kind of country boy that she would bring home to her parents, complete with the lopsided grin and the slight drawl to his voice. And yet, he struck her as mysterious. He was the kind of guy no one really knew about until they got to talking to him, that is if they garnered the gumption to even do that for him. Sam always saw it as like a young girl walking up to a dark shadowy creature and saying hello to it. He was the older of the three, too, and thus one would wonder if she only vouched for him because he had more money than her. But he didn’t: Sam volunteered to foot their first bill together because the label neglected to pay him out enough.

The one on her right had the same issue, given his band didn’t have much, either. Meanwhile, he was the youngest of the three, even though the rich shock of pale gray hair at the crown of his dark head told a different story. He, too, struck Sam as mysterious, given he stood out from a crowd. Where the other had his hands down in the earth, he had the heart of a poet. She could paint while he jammed away on those six strings right behind her. An artist to another artist.

And yet the three of them remained hidden from the world, and hidden from her family. A little safe spot for herself that had no other way out to the outside world. She vowed to keep it a secret and nothing more than that for herself.

She moved about like that of a serpent in the jungle when she even so much as thought of their names. A snake in the grass waiting to twine around her prey, not to swallow them whole, but to hide underground with them. They were hers for the taking, more so than Bill.

She opened her eyes to witness the hot summer sun beating down on her face and on the rail before her. She needed to escape from California somehow.

To break away from it all and trade in between her boys, because they didn’t know much about each other, either.

She doubled back into their house, where she was met with a sharp drop in heat, despite it being the sun room. Sam needed to be down by the water, to paint and then submerge beneath the surface. Matilda and Cassie were still at school and Bill would not be back home for another hour. The perfect time to do just that for herself.

Sam stepped into her bedroom for a change into her shorts and nothing more than a bikini top. There was a day in which she wore that exact outfit around the one on the right, and he showed her the twinkle within his deep set eyes. That was probably the same day where he gave her a photo of himself. She noticed the framed photograph of herself and Bill on their wedding day, but she had no idea where she had put that little photo.

It was small, about the size of a postage stamp. The thought of losing it somewhere in that house made her heart skip a few beats.

The one on the left had given her a photo as well, but at least she knew where she had tucked that away at.

Once she had covered up her breasts with the blue and yellow polka dotted top, she knelt down before the nightstand on her side of the bed. There were three drawers right before her face. The first one was empty, while the second had a Bible, an accompanying rosary, and her black onyx jewelry box inside of it. The third drawer, meanwhile, she never opened once until that moment. She slid it open and was met with a pile of old papers. She shuffled through a few of them until she found a little piece of paper the size of a postage stamp near the bottom.

She turned it over to see him. She recognized those bright stripes of silver at the crown of his head, and his handsome oval face and aquiline nose. The last time she had seen him, he had a little tummy coming in, but right there, he was still quite slim and delicate.

“There you are, Alex,” she whispered to herself; the reason why she had tucked it away there eluded her. The other one she had hid away in her jewelry box, and thus she found him there once she had opened it up.

“Hi, Joey,” she whispered to his lush black curls and those soft brown eyes gazing back at her.

Sam was alone for the time being. Even after tying the knot and taking in two children as if they were her own, she was still that bad girl that the two of them knew so well. She could still feel their touch and feel their lips on her own.

She tucked the one of Alex into the left side of her top, right against her skin. The one of Joey went into the right one. Her paints and brushes were in the next room over. 

The afternoon was just getting started for her.


	2. welcome to new york

Sam made her way out of the house again, but that time with a towel slung over her shoulder; on her other shoulder was a canvas hand bag which held her brushes and her paints, as well as a few little white canvases. Those two little photographs tucked inside of her bikini top stayed in such a snug place that she almost forgot they were there by the time she had stepped out the front door back out to the hot sun. She slipped on her sunglasses once the bath of sunlight washed over her head and bare trim shoulders.

There was a pathway on the right side of the house, which led down to a little clearing; beyond that was a narrow pathway to the water's edge. She moved about the sand to keep it out of her little slip-ons. It didn't seem that long ago, and everything from the past few years felt like such a flash and a blur. She could still feel them touching her and she swore that they both were going to be with her until one of them dropped dead. And yet they still slipped away from her, right through her fingers.

Sam stopped at the clearing for a second to adjust the towel on her shoulder, and to fix the lock of hair behind her ear. Too hot to do anything else. She knew there was a tree down by the waters to protect her from the sun.

Those photographs never budged from their hiding places in her bikini top. At one point, she took a look down at her chest and the pieces of yellow and blue fabric. Alex hidden away in the left, Joey in the right. That was exactly how she took them aside when it all started out. They were both on either of her arms and she managed to balance it all with her artistry and her social life.

It was a year ago when she met Joey and she was renting out an apartment in the outskirts of New York City. She had moved all the way out there from the second place she lived in following Lake Elsinore, Carson City, about three years before to live the artist life full time. A long way from home and yet she was willing to go forth with it all. Over two thousand miles and with the clothes on her back, Sam had settled into the neighborhood of New York City. It was some time later she met Alex.

And then she met Bill.

She went with Bill instead and there were moments wherein she questioned as to why she went with him instead of the two of them. She even spoke to one of her old friends before she left for the West Coast again, and Aurora asked her what had happened between her, Joey, and Alex. She replied with something that she couldn't exactly recall, but she went with him instead. He charmed her and tugged her away from them, at least that was how she saw it in hindsight.

There was a part of her that didn't want to think that, given her new home life. She was everyone's mom there in Lake Elsinore, and she was acting as Matilda and Cassie's mother. There was no way she could turn away from all of this. There was no way she could look at all of this and turn her back from it all, and head on back to New York City. For all she knew, someone had already taken her old apartment.

Aurora had begged her to return to the Big Apple, and yet she couldn't. Sam could still hear the tears in her voice. She looked down at the big rock on her right ring finger glimmered back at her like a hot ember from a fire. She couldn't return to that funky little neighborhood outside of the city.

She was stuck. She was stuck in a marriage that, deep down, did nothing for her anymore. And yet if she could bring Aurora and her fiance Emile out there for at least a visit, it would be a bit more bearable.

Aurora! She missed that whole circle of artist friends, but she missed her especially, because she was easily Sam's closest friend there in the City. Her jet black hair and her milky Japanese complexion, and the way in which she laughed that resembled to a pair of wine glasses tinkling together.

If there was any compliment she could give to her return to Lake Elsinore was painting and making art down by the surface of the waters. The noise of the city had fallen away into the silence of the mountains and the gentle white noise of the waters. And yet, she couldn't help but yearn for it all back again.

She recognized the willowy tree down by the water's edge, and she shuffled past a pair of low scraggly shrubs. Everything was so dry, even standing down there by the water; so dry that it made the crown of her head itch a bit. The hot sun beating down on the crown of her head didn't help matters, either.

She stepped over a dead tree branch and set down her hand bag on the smooth surface of the rock. She lifted her sunglasses up from her face and rested them atop the hot crown of black hair. Sam took a seat on top of the rock so the shade protected her from the hot sun.

She thought about Joey in particular, given he was the first one she met in the City. She set the canvas on her lap and rested the soles of her feet within the edge of the shade. One of the first things Joey had given her was a black and silver anklet, and she knew it was still in the jewelry box in the bedroom. She kept it tucked away in that little box and she wanted to keep it there forever. Keep it there forever, much like how that photograph of Joey had to be hidden away from the rest of the world.

Before she picked out one of the narrow brushes for herself, she reached into the right side for the photograph of Joey. It was so small, too small to do anything with, but it was better than nothing. It was better than having no way to see his round, sweet face and his black curls. The same went for the photo of Alex: she could see the gray sliver at the front of his head, the full tip of his nose, and his little Mona Lisa smile.

She had moved into that small studio apartment near the Bronx, about half a mile from the freeway. Nothing fancy, just a little two bedroom apartment with a view of the skyline from her window. Around then, she was still insisting on going by her full name of Samantha. The choice was either Los Angeles or New York, and she had been avoiding the former. Four years spent in Nevada and she vowed to never return to the Golden Empire. It simply didn't feel like an appropriate place for an up and coming artist, and it was all too familiar no less. It was that inner feeling about leaving home and traveling about the place, to see the world for herself and do whatever she pleased. The evening in which she was deciding whether or not to leave the little place in Carson City, she spotted the place in the listings and she knew it was perfect. She took the offer and she knew it was a new chapter for her.

Within a few days, she picked up everything she had and travelled that distance, alone. Even though her parents would show up within a day or so to help out with her settling into her new place, but she would go at it alone. The first plane ticket out to New York City and she found her rental car in the airport parking lot. She set one foot after the other down on the sidewalk before her.

It was a four storied little building of white stucco and with black trimming. It made her think of those old fashioned hospitals from the turn of the century. She strolled up the steps and made her way into the front lobby. There she met up with Emile St. Vitus, the landlord at the time. He was a young heavy guy with his disheveled black hair and his smooth milky skin.

“Samantha Shelley, right?” he asked her with an ever so slight Southern twang.

“That's my name,” she replied to him, and she couldn't resist the grin on her face.

“You got here pretty quickly,” he confessed to her as he rummaged through his black coat pockets. “I wasn't expectin' you for at least another few days.”

“It's just me,” she assured him; she knitted her eyebrows together at his feeling around for something. “What're you looking for?”

“Your key,” he replied. “It might be in back in my apartment.” He gestured for her to follow him back into that bottom hallway. She closed the heavy wooden door behind her, and it let out a sharp squeak all the while. That front lobby was cozy and narrow, perhaps no bigger for the width of a couch for someone to bring one in for their place. To her right stood a narrow stairwell with a wooden banister and steps covered in brand new dark carpet. The whole place smelled of lemons.

“Right this way,” he said to her again.

“Where are you from, by the way?” she asked him; she brought her head closer to his ear so he could hear her.

“Me?”

“Yeah.”

“New Orleans. I've lived in New York City, down in Manhattan, since I was five years old, though.”

“I was going to tell you—I like your accent.”

“Well, thank you. I haven't been in the Big Easy for a long time, but sometimes I'll slip sump'n out like 'darlin'' or 'y'all.'” Emile stopped before the third door on the left side of the hallway, and he took out the key from his jeans pocket. He pushed the door open.

“I'll wait right here,” she told him as she hung there at the doorway. It was a bit of a task, though, because of the luggage she had been carrying around for a time, but she was willing to let him delve around the place for that key in question. She adjusted the strap of her hand bag on her shoulder. Her bags rested down by her ankles, and the one holding her clothes stood further into the hallway; the inside of her fingers were tired from carrying them around.

“If you ever need anything, I'll be right in here,” he assured her.

“Sure, sure.”

Sam watched Emile shuffle through papers on the heavy dark wood coffee table. She glanced about the front room, which looked cozy and warm even in the face of the warm evening outside with everything closely knit together about the floor. One thing that caught her attention was the black crucifix on the opposite wall right in front of her. The body and arms of Jesus was lined with a tiny bit of gold leaf, but enough for her to see it from clear across the room.

The sound of someone kicking the bag full of clothes caught her ear. She turned her head to see a slender young guy with long jet black curly hair stumbling forth. He caught himself and stood upright. He turned around to show her his raised dark eyebrows.

“Oh, god, pardon me,” he said to her in a broken voice.

“Oh, no, it's okay,” she assured him as she dragged it closer to her feet.

“I didn't see it, I swear,” he sputtered.

“It's okay, I promise,” she reassured him with a wave of her hand to him. She noticed his large liquid brown eyes, his straight pitch dark eyebrows, and his prominent nose with a gentle kink in the bridge. He was rather handsome with his slightly rounded face and his chubby little apple cheekbones. All chubby and round in the face, but his body was slim and lanky, even delicate. His hands were large, almost like paws, complete with slender trim fingers.

She looked down at his sinewy thighs, clothed in tight black jeans; she dropped her gaze down to his knees, his slender lower legs, and his feet, the latter of which were donned in black Chuck Taylors. He had on a little black leather jacket with the zipper tugged part of the way down his chest to show off his olive green shirt.

“It's okay,” she repeated to him again. “It's not like I have anything fragile inside of there.”

“I hope not,” he said in a soft voice; he had bit of a New York accent, but it was a bit more distorted in comparison to the Brooklyn one. It almost sounded like he was saying “naw” when he said “not”.

“I swear,” she insisted.

“You swear? Like... fucking hell? Like that kinda swear?”

She giggled at that, but it also made her squirm a little bit. This strange man must have noticed the nervous look on her face because he swallowed and scurried away from her. She watched him go down the corridor, all the way to the very end. He ducked inside the room there and closed the door, and all Sam could think about was what she did right then. It was awkward, for sure, but he got a laugh out of her. The way he moved stayed with her: he shuffled about the carpet and he swayed his hips from side to side with each step. Or perhaps it was just her imagination and her aloneness talking and she fixated on something that could give her some kind of great reward.

Emile emerged from the other side of the front room with something silvery in his hand.

“Samantha?”

She turned her head and he stood before her for a second to hand her the key.

“The key was hidin’ behind the remote control, if you can believe that. Anyways, I’ll talk more later, but right now, I haveta run. I’m positive you know where your place is.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. Thank you, too.”

“Absolutely!” He brushed past her and doubled back towards the front door. Once he was outside, Sam turned her head so she could look down the hall again. That strange man hadn't surfaced out of the room there at the end.

She sighed through her nose, and picked up her things, and doubled back to the stairwell; she kept the key nestled in between her right index and middle fingers. The steps creaked underneath her, even though she wasn't very heavy. She reached the landing to catch her breath. She was on the third floor, which meant she had to take that next flight of stairs, complete with all those things weighing her down.

She fetched up another sigh and picked it all up again. She lugged it all upstairs to that second studio on the right side of the corridor there; she set her things down and let out a low whistle. Once her heartbeat calmed down, she slipped the key into the hole under the doorknob. The small _click_ was the sweetest thing she needed to hear. She let the door swing open before her so she could pick up her things yet again; she lugged it all into the apartment, complete with her nearly stumbling on her shoelaces.

Sam caught herself and set everything down on the floor, right up against the wall. She sighed again and looked about the spacious front room; on the far side of the room was a doorway and a closet; in front of her was another doorway. She poked her head in through that one to find the tiny kitchen combined with a little nook which, she knew could be the dining room. She doubled back across the floor to check out the other room, which she knew was going to be her bedroom; right in front of her was the bathroom. The whole place had that new room smell, and she knew the place had been repainted.

“Perfect,” she muttered to herself. “Home sweet home.”

The first thing she needed was a bed, even if it was just a makeshift bed like a spare cushion, or a few spare ones. She picked up her hand bag, and doubled back to the front door, and locked the place up for the time being. Moved to a new place and had no bed to sleep on afterwards.

Sam descended the stairs, and spotted that strange dark man at the front door. He watched her walk closer to him; his brown eyes fixated on her even though she was walking at a normal pace.

“Hey,” he said to her in a low voice.

“Hi,” she greeted back to him as she held onto the strap of her purse.

“I'm still sorry about earlier,” he blurted out with a bow of his head; she glanced down at his feet, right as he cocked his left foot inward a bit.

“I assure you it's okay,” she assured him. “Really, it was just full of clothes.”

“Well, and that stupid joke I said to you, too—” He shrugged his shoulders a little bit. “—I felt like I made you uncomfortable.”

“No, no—you got a laugh out of me. I promise.”

“Yeah, yeah...” He shifted his weight at the sight of her.

“I have to get a bed,” she told him.

“D'you just move in?”

“Just moved in. On the third floor.”

“Ah, that's cool! I was just helping someone move, too. Right down the hall here.”

“That's cool,” she echoed him.

“Yeah, it's—it's really cool.” He swallowed and shifted his weight again. She dropped her gaze to his chest and his stomach.

“So, uh... you got anyone comin' to help ya?” he asked her.

“My parents are coming tomorrow, but—I don't have any place to sleep, though.”

“True, true...” He lifted his gaze past Sam's crown of dark hair to the hall behind her. “...oh, there's Frankie!” She turned around to see the tall lanky guy with long nappy black hair down past his shoulders and thick bangs to accentuate his olive shaped face. He approached the two of them with a smirk on his face and his hands clasped together.

“Hey, Joey—who's this young lady?”

“I just moved in,” she told him as her heart hammered inside of her chest. “I—I need a bed.” She ducked past the guy in front of her, Joey, and headed outside before Frank could say anything. She headed down the front steps back to the sidewalk.

Alone in the Bronx, a girl alone in the brand new big city, but she spotted a furniture shop up the street. She hoisted her hand bag again and walked at a brisk pace down the sidewalk. She reached the crosswalk, right when the light turned red so she could stop and think for a second.

Sam looked back to the apartment building, and she thought about those two guys. It was just an awkward encounter, it was nothing she could think about too much. Although Joey was kind enough towards her that she could perhaps nod it off as nothing more. She couldn't think too much about that other guy, Frank, given she only looked at him for five seconds. But then again, it had to be from the fact she was a girl from the West Coast having relocated in the Big Apple.

The light turned green and she pressed onward across the dark pavement, right across the street. Another crossing. Another round of green lights. She reached the furniture shop there and ducked into the side with the beds. If she could climb into one of them and sleep there, she would do that.

She thought about her parents, and she wondered if her mother would help her pick out everything. An artist and often times she questioned her ability to pick out things that looked good. Her wardrobe was drab with lots of black, and her hand bag was a nice shade of soft beige. She eyed a little twin bed, the surface of which rose up to her waist. She set one hand on the top and put her weight into it.

It was the first bed and yet she was already sold on it. She reached down to check the price. Perfect!

And now something to put on top of the bed. She wandered through the room in search of sheets and a blanket. The place was bigger on the inside, much to her surprise.

She turned a corner and spotted Joey and Frank checking out towels. She gasped at the sight of them. Frank turned to see her with a stunned look on his face. Joey was saying something all the while.

“So, you've got—” He stopped in his tracks and turned to follow Frank's gaze. “—hey.”

“Hi?” she greeted him, and she couldn't resist the smirk on her face.

“Didn't expect to see you here,” he confessed, and showed her a smirk in return: she noticed a little gap on the right side of his teeth.

“Um, me, neither.”

“Guess we were right behind you,” Frank told her with a nod of his head; his accent wasn't nearly as prominent as Joey's distorted one; she spotted a piece of gum tucked on one side of his teeth.

“Yeah, I guess so, too. Um—” Her mind went blank and Joey ran his fingers through the roots of his curls, right on the crown of his head. “I—needed a place for my head.”

“I do, too,” Frank added with a shrug of his shoulders.

“Do you—do you need any help?” Joey offered her.

“Well—like I said, my parents aren't going to be here 'til tomorrow, so... yeah. I could use a hand.”

“Why didn't they come with you?” Frank asked her.

“I needed to put up the money and boogie out here quick,” she explained.

“You're not from around here, are you?” he continued, and he knitted his eyebrows together.

“It's okay, I'm not, either,” Joey assured her.

“California,” she replied, and they both gaped at her.

“Wow, long way from home,” Frank remarked.

“I was born near the L.A. area, but I lived in Carson City for four years. It was just—time for me to leave and start a new chapter, though.” She turned her attention to Joey. “You're not from here, either?”

“Sorta,” he clarified. “I'm from upstate. Frankie—” He gestured towards him. “—is from here in the Bronx so—ya got any questions, ask him.”

“And—if I head out to upstate, I can refer back to you?” she asked him.

“Absolutely!”

“Oh, yeah, you do anything upstate, Joey's your man,” Frank explained. “What's your name, by the way?”

“Samantha. Sometimes I go by Sam, though.”

“Sam, and not 'Tha?” Joey cracked.

“'Hand this over to 'Tha',” Frank joined in with a smirk on his face; that coaxed a giggle out of her. And then Joey's expression turned serious.

“So seeing as you're alone, let me reiterate—do you need any help?” he offered her.

“Do you guys wanna—help me?” She was taken aback by it. “You know, I don't want to impose.”

“You're not imposin',” Frank assured her with a shake of his head and a tucking of a lock of black hair behind his ear. “We're both moving so—you and I need all the help we can get. That's why we were both shocked to find you were here by yourself.”

“Movin' sucks,” Joey added. “Especially when you're going cross country like that.”

“Yeah, Joey moved from Oswego—his hometown—to be closer to New York City last year, to this little town called Kingston.”

“It's right up the road from here,” Joey pointed out, “like about an hour north from here. It was either there or to Camillus, outside of Syracuse, and it was like—I gotta be closer, you know?”

“Oh, yeah, yeah...” Sam's voice trailed off as she wondered why he had to be closer to New York City from an even more mysterious place such as upstate New York.

“But even though it really wasn't that far, it was hard,” Joey continued, “I was beat once I got settled into my new place. Like really, I lay down to go to bed and I was asleep before my head even hit the pillow.”

“That is tired,” she agreed with him; and she folded her arms across her chest, “you know, come to think of it—one time, my dad was helping a friend of his move to a new house—not very far, either, like to the other side of town—and he was so tired by the end of it, he actually fell asleep standing up.”

“Oh, well, I got nuttin' on him then,” Joey teased her, and that brought a little smile out of her.

“Anyways, I found a little bed for myself—over there—” She pointed to the other side of the room. “—by the beds. A little twin. Now I just have to find sheets and blankets and a pillow—you know, all that crap.”

“Hey, me, too!” Frank's face lit up. “You wanna do that together?”

“Sure, why not? I'm not very good at picking out things like that, though.”

“I'm not, either,” he assured her. “But—let's see where it goes, though.”

Indeed, Frank and Joey led Sam into the upholstery section of the shop to help her out, and also for her to help the two of them out. She lingered behind them as she searched about the shelves for anything that caught her attention: she slipped past the two of them so as to reach the end of the aisle with the bedding and the bed sheets. She gathered herself when she spotted a set of blue satin and a comforter that looked as though it was made of velvet. She tucked it underneath her arm and then searched about the shelves for a pillow.

Frank and Joey's conversation behind her caught her ear but she was more focused on finding a soft pillow, a soft place for her head.

Frank burst out laughing at something, but Sam ran her hand over the surface of a plush bright pink pillow. Like petting a cat.

“Oh, girly!” Frank remarked; she turned her head to find him walking towards her. “That's so girlish, it's badass.”

“It's soft, too. Think I'll take this one...”

She scooped the pillow off of the rack and tucked it underneath her free arm. Both her arms quivered with soreness from carrying such heavy bags down the block to her new place, but she was more than willing to carry her new bedding back to the front.

“Hey, Sam I am—” Joey called after her. She turned to see him holding up a set of black sheets next to his head. “—what do you think about this?”

She ambled over to him to check them out for herself.

“Black Egyptian cotton,” Frank added.

“Ooh, lovely,” she remarked. She noticed a pair of furled throw blankets tucked under his arms, one under each arm. “What you got here?”

“A couple of blankets that, I'm not too sure how to pair them with these black sheets,” he explained. He held up the brown plaid one under his right arm, followed by a black and white one from under his left arm.

“The one in your left hand,” she quipped within a second.

“You like this one better?”

“Yeah, it looks like it fits the sheets better,” she remarked.

“Alright! This was easier than I thought.” Frank set the other blanket back onto the shelf.

Sam didn't hesitate to return to the front of the shop. She told the young clerk she had picked out the twin on the other side of the room and she wrote down the number on a pad of paper in front of her.

“She also needs it tonight,” Frank joined in.

“Okay! What's your address?” the clerk asked her.

“I'm right down the street,” Sam replied, “that apartment building after the stoplight.”

“Blackwood Villas,” Frank clarified.

“Apartment thirty two,” Sam added.

“Okay... I'll get a couple of guys down there in a bit,” she assured her with a final scribble on the paper.

Once they had paid for their new bedding, Frank and Sam stepped back outside. Joey followed suit with a towel tossed over his shoulders.

“I needed a new towel,” he explained.

“Frankie couldn't get towels, but you sure could, though,” Sam cracked.

“Exactly! That's what he and I were talking about earlier.”

The three of them walked together back to the crosswalk and then to the apartment building; Sam continued to linger behind the them, but she still stayed close with them given she was the newcomer. Frank ascended the steps first and held the front door for both her and Joey.

“Well, thank you to you both,” she said with a tremble to her voice.

“And thank you,” Joey told her as he adjusted the towel over his shoulders like he had been sweating out the whole day.

“By the way—if you want or need anything, I'm right down the hall here,” Frank told her.

“I'm sure I'm going to need you,” she pointed out. “'Cause—you know. Moving sucks.”

“Movin' sucks,” Joey echoed with a shrug of the shoulders.

“What're you gonna do?” she asked him.

“I think I'm gonna go get sump'n to eat,” he told her. “I'll see you tomorrow, Frankie.” He turned to her with a nonchalant look on his face. “And you have a good night, too.”

“You, too, Joey,” Sam replied, and that was when the two guys from the furniture shop arrived with her new bed. “I'll be sleeping comfy tonight!”

"Oh, and by the way, welcome to New York," Frank declared. "Enjoy your stay!"

"I think I will," she assured him.


	3. coffee and paints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"your ears are full of their language,  
>  there's wisdom there you're sure,  
> 'til the words start slurring  
> and you can't find the door."_  
> -"coffee and tv", blur

The bed had been pressed against the wall opposite from the window, so Sam could wake up in the morning bathed in the sunlight. She crawled underneath the covers and rested her head on the soft pillow. Alone in New York City, but at least she had a new friend in Frank downstairs, though. Her parents would arrive come the morning light, but she nestled her head down in the surface of the pillow and closed her eyes.

She couldn't hardly nudge those two guys out from her mind. Every thought of them turned into one of her parents. She could tell them she met a pair of new friends, but it was nothing special.

She closed her eyes and drifted off within a few seconds.

Sam opened her eyes to find a head full of black and white right in front of her face. She couldn't tell what color his eyes were, but she could make out the sight of his nose and that head of hair despite the shadows around them. Who was he?

His hand caressed over her hip and her thigh, but he never let his hand go any further than that. He said something to her, but she couldn't tell. He brought his lips closer to hers, but he never kissed her there.

Sam raised her gaze to the low ceiling over them.

“Samantha,” he whispered to her; he sounded as though he had become a ghost, even though his body was warm and soft. “Samantha—kiss me—”

She moved her head in closer to his, and he brought a hand to her face.

“Please—kiss me—”

But she was reluctant. This was a man she knew, and yet she didn't know where he came from, or why they were trapped inside the trunk. Or why he was calling her by her full name.

The car came to a halt and he held onto her by the hip.

“What's going on?” she asked him.

“I don't know. I don't—where are we going—” He huddled closer to her.

“Come here,” she begged him and she put her arms around him. His hair was soft. Everything about him was soft to the touch.

“Don't let me go,” he whispered to her. “Please don't let me go—Samantha—”

The white stripe in his otherwise dark hair remained right in front of her nose so she could catch the delicate smell of his cologne. The trunk popped open and she could see into his hazel eyes and his full face just long enough. She turned her head to find they had wound up in a desert somewhere, albeit a desert with a vast span of shallow smooth lakes as far as she could see.

“—bury the two of them,” a disembodied voice before them commanded. Sam and the man next to her were laid out on the desert sand, flat on their backs. His arms extended over his head while his legs were spread straight out before him. She looked down to find they both had been stripped naked.

“Stripped us naked and hid our clothes,” she muttered aloud.

She could feel herself being dragged along the soil to somewhere. The lakes. They were being dragged along and then about to be left in the waters to drown.

She jerked herself awake and she lifted her head. Darkness surrounded her. She was back in her bedroom. Sam rolled over onto her back to ensure she didn't have something stuck in her spine and her shoulder blades. She gazed up at the dark ceiling overhead.

First off, who was that man laying next to her on the sand? And why were they laying next to each other in that trunk? She could hardly shake the look of fear in his dark eyes. And what was going on with his hair, that stripe, that shock of pure white hair right on top of his forehead?

She tried to return to sleep but that man next to her in the trunk kept appearing to her with every close of her eyes. She wanted to know who he was, and why they had been there together.

She opened her eyes again to the darkness once more. Somewhere in her bags was her drawing pad. And somewhere else, she had stashed away her pencils and good pens. On the sleepless nights, she could take that out to draw something for herself and for the nighttime stars.

Sam pushed back the covers and set the soles of her feet on the cold carpet. There was another thing she needed: a clock for her wall, and a lamp next to her bed. There was no way she could draw something, unless she took the drawing pad into the kitchen and drew on the counter.

That was it! Using the ambient light from the streetlights outside, she made her way towards the doorway and she ducked into the front room to fetch that drawing pad. Everything was dark save for a small ray of orange light coming in through the window in front of her.

She could feel the smooth surface of the cardboard backing; next to her was the feeling of a pencil and an ink pen. She touched the tops of those, and then she took them out of their pitch dark hiding spot. Careful not to hit her foot on something, she crept into the kitchen and flicked on the light.

After blinking several times to adjust her eyes to the light, she set the pad on the empty counter and opened to a fresh sheet. His face was round and full, and a little bit pale, too. Then there was that white stripe in his hair. But all she could do at the moment was draw the way she saw him in her dream.

Laying next to her inside of the trunk and right up against her body. The warmth from his body felt so real that she swore he was right there right next to her. The softness of his stomach went with the softness of his face, and she swore that was real, too.

She rubbed her eye and yawned. She figured she would draw the rest of his body come the morning, but for the time being, she needed to rest. She had a big day ahead of her, and within a few hours no less.

Sam switched off the light and stood still in the doorway for a moment to make her eyes adjust to the darkness. And then she shuffled back to her room, and she climbed back into bed.

Drawing helped, as she lay her head back onto her pillow and fell asleep within mere seconds again. That time she had a rather heavy dreamless sleep and awoke to the gray morning light painted across the room. She climbed out of bed yet again and slipped on her bathrobe, and then she realized she had no coffee maker.

She tightened the belt and headed out of her apartment to the hallway. Down the stairs, past Emile’s place, and then down the hall to the very end. She knocked on the panel three times.

Silence.

Then—

“Oh, hey, Sam,” Frank greeted her with a yawn and a big beaming smile. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here this early.”

“Do you have any coffee?” she asked him.

“Any coffee? I do, as a matter of fact... would you like to come in?”

“I might as well...” She stepped into the small studio apartment, a humble little place about half the size of her own, and smelling of fresh laundry. Frank led her into the tiny kitchen on the other side of the room and gestured for her to take a seat at the small table.

One thing that caught her eye was the rack of guitars tucked in the corner of the room to her left.

“How’d you like yours?” he asked her as he dropped in a few scoops of coffee grounds into the maker on the counter.

“I like a bit of cream most of the time,” she said, “but I’ll be happy with straight up black, though.”

“I got some cream, so don’t sweat it,” he promised her as he closed the lid and pressed the button. “Just so long as you don’t want any sugar.”

“Nah, it’s too much at that point,” she replied with a shake of her head.

“I hear ya,” he said as he took a blank white mug out of the cupboard over his head.

“Would you be willing to lend me some sugar, though?” she offered. “You know, if I needed it?”

“Oh, yeah—I’d do the same if I got a bit of sugar from Joey,” he told her with a raise of his coffee cup.

“By the way, I should ask you—what do you guys do?” she asked him.

“Me and Joey?” He knitted his eyebrows together.

“Yeah.”

“We play in a band together.” He gestured to the rack of guitars on the other side of the room.

“What kind of band?”

“Rock n' roll. Kinda harder, though. I don't know what kind of music you like, though.”

“I've got an open mind,” she pointed out. “What do you guys play?”

“I play bass, and he sings.”

“He sings! What’s his voice like?”

“Lovely. I’ll take you into our jam space at some point—you should seriously hear him.”

“Is it really that spectacular?” she teased him.

“Sam, trust me—you hear that man sing, you’re never gonna wanna hear another singer again. He’s one of those rare ones who can sing literally anything and own it.”

“Oh, well, now I’ll be the judge of that then,” she scoffed with a wag of the finger. The coffee maker made a soft beep, and he poured them both cups of coffee. He brought her mug to her, and then he kept on going over to the rack of guitars.

“What’chu thinkin’ ‘bout?” he called back to her.

“Just like—what you're gonna do over there,” was all she could think about. He picked out a big black bass guitar with five silvery strings and held it down below his waist.

“I think—where's my strap?” he wondered aloud.

“The thing to hold it up to your body?” she asked him.

“Yeah... it's black leather with a bit of beading in the center of it. Like, to where it's on my shoulder.”

“Why'd you take it off there?” She couldn't help but show him a little lopsided grin.

“I had to put it on another guitar,” he explained with a smile back to her, “except... I dunno where it went.”

He tucked a lock of his lush black hair and then he looked down behind the rack.

“Oh, there it is,” he proclaimed, and he stooped down to pick out a long strap of black leather out from behind the rack.

“You want some help?” she suggested as she climbed to her feet and headed on over to him.

“Yeah—c'mon over here.”

Sam held onto his bass by the body as he slipped on the strap. On the bottom and then onto the base of the neck. He ducked his head underneath the strap and set it onto his shoulder: the beads in question glimmered under the ambient morning light and the kitchen lights. The bass hung down low by his hips; stray locks of his dark lush hair sprawled down over his shoulder.

“My amp's 'round here somewhere,” he said in a low voice. She glanced about the floor. She had no idea what to look for.

“Oh, there it is—” She turned her head again in time to see him plugging his bass into a small black box on the floor. He stood upright with his left hand on the neck of the bass and his right hand down by the body. She imagined him in full on rock star swag and up on a stage somewhere.

He held his fingers down over the thickest strings and strummed at a slow pace.

“Okay, it's in tune,” he quipped with a grin on his face.

“So what you wanna show me?” she asked him.

“Well, we're working on a new record at the moment,” he started, “but I'm not really supposed to share something from it, though.”

“Why's that?”

“It's this whole confidentiality thing with the record label and also because it's just something you don't really talk about with outsiders, either,” he explained in a single breath. “Add to that—you know, if nothing else—I don't really want to ruin the surprise, either.”

“That makes sense,” she told him with a shake of her head. She doubled back to the kitchen to fetch her cup of coffee, and then she returned to him. He started out down low on the neck and he plucked the strings with his first two fingers. She watched him go slow at first and then he picked it up.

Next thing she knew, he was going quickly. The bass had this rich guttural tone, even for such a small amp there on the floor. She kept her eyes glued onto his plucking as she sipped her coffee, so rich and warm. At one point, she found herself nodding her head along to it. She nodded along to him and she pictured the full band next to him, including Joey at the microphone. She tried to picture him singing out something, but she couldn't.

She needed to hear him for herself.

“Man, you are just a beast,” she proclaimed to him. Frank set his right hand on the strings to stop them in their tracks.

“What's that?”

“You're amazing!” she said as she held the cup down to her chest.

“Aw, shucks, well, I try my best,” he replied with a shrug of his shoulders and a shy little grin.

“I want to paint something,” she declared. “I want to paint something while you're playing.”

“Like—paint a portrait of me?” He gave his black hair a toss back from his neck and held his hand next to his face as if striking a pose.

“Yes!” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes! And I want to do it while you're playing.”

Frank knitted his eyebrows together at the suggestion, and then he realized what she meant by that as the grin returned to his handsome face.

“What say you take me to your humble abode so we can do that?” he suggested. Sam guided him out of the apartment and down the corridor to the stairwell; at one point, she peered over her shoulder to find him right behind her with his bass slung around onto his back and his carrying his amp in one hand.

“Want me to get that for you?” she offered with a reach of her hand to his amp.

“Oh, that's kind of you, but I've got it, though,” he assured her. They ascended the stairs and reached her apartment.

Frank set down his amp right in the middle of the floor and plugged in his bass right then and there. Sam knelt down to bring her paint brushes out of their hiding place in her luggage; she set her cup of coffee on the floor, right at the base of the wall.

“Where's my pad...” she muttered. And then she remembered that she had left it in the kitchen. She stood to her feet and made her way in there. Indeed, she had left the drawing pad sprawled open on the counter top. It was early in the morning when she made that one drawing of that man from her dream. He appeared as nothing more than a floating head with a detached neck and a faint body. The stripe on his head appeared in the form of a void.

Maybe another time. She picked up the pad and turned to a clean sheet for her paints. It wasn't the best type of paper for watercolor painting but she knew she could do it with what little she had in her bags. She had a little container in one pocket to hold the water.

Frank plugged the amp into the outlet in the far wall. He didn't hesitate to begin playing for her once she took her seat on the floor in a cross legged position. Every so often, she lifted her gaze from the pad over to him in the middle of the room.

It wasn't a lifelike painting, but it was something to paint his long lanky legs and his slim body, the latter of which was tucked behind that bass guitar. She wished to make those beads on his shoulder extra sparkly and bright with the paints, but it was all she had at the moment. She gave his dark hair some splashes of crimson red, vermilion, and bright yellow to mimic the morning sunlight shining through the window and onto him.

She surrounded his body with red, violet, and a little bit of blue. His playing resembled to a swirling wave, one that rose and fell with the colors of the wind and the daylight filtering through the window. She knew she wasn't in California anymore when she realized that the gray surrounding the sun was there to stay. Some more warm colors to go in junction with the incoming snow.

Sam was about to sign her initials, S.R.S., for Samantha Rose Shelley, at the bottom left corner of the painting with the thin brush when a knock on the door stopped them both in their tracks. Frank set his fingers on the fret board to silence the strings.

“Wonder who that could be,” he declared in a soft voice.

“Hope it's not Emile being all like 'keep it down!'” said Sam as the butterflies rose up in her stomach. She stood to her feet and, once she shook her right foot about to get the blood flowing again, she made her way over to the front door, where she was met with a pair of familiar people there before her. The man had a rather large cowlick near the center of his forehead, while the woman had a short bob salt and pepper hair which went rather nicely with her cat eye glasses.

“Mom! Dad!” Sam greeted them with a smile on her face.

“Hi, sweetie!” Esmé Shelley greeted her with an embrace around her.

“I wasn't expecting to see you here for at least another few hours,” she confessed as she let her go to give Ruben a hug hello.

“We got on the red eye,” he told her. “It was either that or wait another day because of the snow coming in...” His voice trailed off as he brought his attention to Frank.

“Oh, hello,” Esmé said to him.

“Hi,” he returned the favor with an awkward smile. “I wasn't expecting her to have company.”

“Oh, Frank,” Sam piped up; she still had her arm around Ruben, “—this is my dad Ruben and my mom Esmé. Mom, Dad, this is Frank—he lives downstairs and he helped me pick out a bed yesterday.”

“Wow,” Esmé remarked with a raise of her eyebrows.

“Nice set up you got there,” Ruben complimented him with a nod of his head.

“Thank you!”

“He's a professional,” she continued.

“Yeah, I'm—in a band,” he answered with a shrug and an unplugging of his amp. “We're putting out a record soon.”

“Hard working fellow,” said Esmé as she adjusted her glasses.

“Yeah, we—we pay our dues here in New York City...” He slung his bass over his head and shoulders, and then he ran his fingers through his dark hair.

“On the way over here, we found a little cafe and we were thinking of taking you out to breakfast,” Ruben told Sam.

“And then we'll help out with everything,” Esmé followed up as she put her arm around her daughter.

“Okay! Frank and I had coffee just a little bit ago—” She noticed the mug down on the floor and she realized she had barely touched her coffee. “—mine's gone cold, though.”

“Don't worry about the mug, Sam,” Frank assured her.

“You sure?”

“Positive. Really, take your time with it. Put some ice in there and enjoy the flavors of New York.”

“We parked down the block,” Ruben told her; he slipped his hand into his coat pocket to search for his car key, “so I'll be right back.” He then turned to Frank, who had slung his bass around onto his back and carried his amp with both hands. “Do you need any help, son?”

“Oh, no, thanks, sir—I live right downstairs.”

“I tried offering him some help and he told me the same thing,” Sam recalled.

“Hard working fellow,” Ruben echoed Esmé; the former began back down the stairs, while the latter stepped into the apartment.

“I never really got a good look of this place,” she started with her hands tucked into her coat pockets. “I remember seeing it online but that was about it...”

Sam gestured Frank to come closer to her.

“I wanna thank you, Frankie,” she said in a hushed voice, excited.

“And I wanna thank you, too, Sam I am,” he returned the favor. He then cleared his throat and peered behind him to make sure they were alone. “By the way...” He cleared his throat.

“... I’m just curious, but is there a dude in your life at all?”

She shook her head, and then she squinted her eyes at him.

“Why... you wanna introduce me to your band mates?” she teased him.

“Yeah! You're a cool chick, Sam. I wanna especially introduce you to our drummer Charlie, who's also my uncle.”

“He's your uncle, really?”

“Technically, yeah. We're only three years apart, though, but yeah: my mom is his older sister. He's an artist, too, and he's been one his whole entire life. He'll like you, I'm sure of it.” He flashed her a wink and without another word, he began back down the stairs after Ruben.

Sam watched him descend the stairs and she knew that it was only the beginning from there.


	4. the new guy

One of the things that Sam and her parents had gotten for herself was a phone for the kitchen. Once hooked up to the outlet there on the wall next to the stove, she made a note to herself to head on down to Frank and Emile's apartments for their phone numbers. There wasn't much they could bring into her apartment, nor could they find much for her at the time being, but as Ruben put it, it was enough to get her started and to make the place all the more like home.

“At least you have a place where you can sit down now,” Esmé pointed as she took a seat on the end of the small soft blue couch which they had pushed against the wall right next to the entrance of the kitchen.

“And some stuff to eat, too,” Sam added as she took her seat next to her mother. Esmé put her arm around her and sighed through her nose. Ruben then stumbled into the room with two water bottles in one hand and a single bottle in the other hand; he handed the two to them before he took a seat to the left of Sam.

“I'm glad we're in New York at the moment,” he remarked as he unscrewed the cap from the bottle and took a sip from it.

“I am, too,” Esmé added, “lots to eat around here.”

“Lots to eat and everything is close by, too... I was thinking of driving somewhere but I think the three of us can take a walk down the block for a bite of dinner and then—” He turned to Sam right next to him there on the couch.

“—your mom and I'll head on back to the hotel for the night.”

“Okay, Daddy,” she told him. Indeed, the family remained there for a few moments before they returned to their feet and made their way downstairs back to the front door, and they headed out to the blustery night. The biting New York cold was going to be the biggest adjustment for Sam, but she knew she could live with it all. It was what she wanted, and everything she could ever possibly ask for.

Come midnight and after their dinner, Ruben and Esmé gave her hugs good night and then returned to their car. Sam saw them off right as the first snow flurries began drifting down from the orange sky overhead.

Actual clear cut seasons, compared to the dry as a bone nice days making up the West Coast.

She knew it was getting late, and thus there was no way she could talk to Frank and Emile at that moment. She returned to her new home and crawled under the warm covers for the night. The second she closed her eyes, the memory of the man with the bright white stripe in his hair appeared right before her. He was a bit more faint but she did recognize his hair and his big frightened eyes staring back at her.

And yet she wasn't afraid of him anymore: she kept her eyes closed and stared at him straight on. Like comforting a scared boy.

And even with him there, within time, she fell asleep. Unlike that previous night, she slept all the way through to the gray morning night. She awoke feeling refreshed and ready to face on the day ahead. She sat upright in bed and rose her arms high above her head.

Some breakfast and a cup of coffee, and then on down to Frank and Emile's places for their numbers. Once she walked away from Emile's apartment, and onward to the end of the hallway, the door swung open and Frank poked his head out right then and there. His hair appeared wet and he smelled like fresh powder.

“Hey!” he greeted her.

“Hey, I was just about to knock on your door and ask for your number,” she said in a single breath.

“What you want my number for—you wanna hit me up in the middle of the night?” he teased her with a grin on his face.

“Oh, you know—just to have you at arm's length and whatnot. You know, so I don't have to walk on down from my apartment if I wanna talk to you about something.”

“Makes sense,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows and a nod of his head. He gestured her to come on into his apartment; she spotted a heavy black burlap guitar case leaned against the back of his sofa. And she put two and two together right there.

“Are you headed out somewhere?” she asked him as he scribbled his number onto a pad of lined paper with a little black pen.

“Yeah, I'm goin' to rehearsal down in Manhattan at the moment—well, I shouldn't say at the moment. It's going to take an hour to get down there. Charlie offered to drive me there because he lives around the corner here, but I told him we could take the subway down there.”

“Charlie's coming over?”

“Yeah—he'll be here in...” He peered down at his black leather wristwatch. “...like any minute now.” Careful to keep the paper pristine, Frank separated that single note from the notepad and folded it inward a bit to emphasize his phone number. He handed it to her with his one hand, and he tucked the pen into his coat pocket with his other hand.

“Would you like to meet him?” he offered her.

“I'd love to!”

“Also, did you eat something already?” he asked her.

“I did, yeah—I think my parents won't be coming until quite a bit later. Why? What ya wanna do?”

“Well, I figured that... since you're fully dressed, you could come along and hang out with us if you want to.”

“I'd love to—I'd have to grab my coat real quick, though.”

“Okay, well, you better hustle. Like I said, he'll be here like any given second.”

Sam thanked him as she took the paper and held it out before her like she was holding a fabergé egg, all the way back up to her place to fetch her big black heavy peacoat, her boots, and her gloves. She locked the front door when Frank's voice floated up the stairwell. She walked at a brisk pace towards the top of the stairs to see him standing next to another guy with a head of big black curls and a little cleft in his rounded chin. They both watched her hold onto the banister and make her way towards them.

The guy on the left ran his fingers through the mop of curls crowning his head; his beady brown eyes locked onto her with each and every step. He towered over her and yet she grinned at him like he was a good friend she had known for years.

“Sam, this is my uncle brother Charlie,” Frank introduced her, to which she giggled at the words “uncle brother.”

“So you're the infamous artist,” Charlie followed up with a point to her; he spoke with a little bit of a lisp and a soft voice.

“And so are you,” she retorted. “I'd like to see some of your work.”

“And I hope I have the chance to see some of yours at some point. Anyways, we're headed on down to Manhattan—Frankie doesn't really want to drive and I don't really blame him for it, either.”

“So—the subway?” Sam suggested as she reached under her coat to fix the strap on her purse.

“It goes anywhere 'round here,” Frank declared as he buttoned his coat up to his chin and rubbed his hands together. Charlie adjusted his gloves and then he extended his hand to the doorknob.

The three of them were met with the sharp, stinging cold wind accompanied with the first snow flurries of the incoming blizzard. Sam bowed her head into her coat collar to protect her chin and neck. Frank and Charlie huddled up on either side of her to keep her warm. She stared straight ahead, right down the block, and she spotted an iron wrought fence on the sidewalk.

“Is that a subway right there?” she asked them over the roar of the wind and the surrounding traffic.

“That's it right there!” Frank declared. They crossed the street from the corner and kept going on towards that fence in question; they came closer and Sam spotted a cement staircase right before them. They descended the steps into the terminal, which smelled of cleaner and cigarettes. Sam wrinkled her nose at the smell but she knew it was part of the deal of living in New York City.

Within time, the three of them stood on the platform in anticipation of the next subway. Sam shivered and kept her hands tucked in her coat pockets. The silvery train rolled up in front of them and screeched to a halt on those pitch black rails down below. The double doors in front of them squeaked open and the three of them bustled their way into the car; Frank lunged for the firm orange canvas seat next to the door, and then Sam and Charlie followed suit onto the bench. A few more people boarded after them, and then the doors slid shut with a soft squeak.

Charlie, who had taken his seat to the right of her, turned his attention to her.

“So, you work part time, or plan on going to school?” he asked her as he ran his fingers through his hair again.

“Well, not really,” she confessed, “I really moved here to start a new chapter for myself, but I think going to school might be interesting, though.”

“Well, you gotta live here for six months before you can sign up for it,” he explained, “although I say go for it within the next few days so you can get the grants and whatnot for the autumn this year. I know that 'cause Frankie tried to go to school a couple of years ago so we all looked into that.”

“Winter’s just barely started,” she pointed out.

“Exactly! So you can live here and gain some seniority, because I’d like to see you walking around a college campus of sorts. You know, it being the whole brave new world sorta thing and everything.”

“Hey, Char,” Frank called to him over the hum of the subway, “did you bring your pencils with you to the rehearsal space?”

“I always do,” Charlie flatly replied. “You know I always do.”

“Just makin’ sure, y’know.”

“When you said you met an artist and that she lives upstairs from you, you know I had to bring ‘em with me when we got back to the space. We thought we were going to meet her.”

“And here we are,” Frank proclaimed with a gesture of his hands in front of him.

Sam glanced back and forth between the two of them. They might as well have been brothers, and she could sense that they argued like a couple of siblings just from sitting there in between the two of them. She sighed through her nose and leaned back next to Charlie, who closed his coat to keep the chill of the subway off of his neck and collar bones.

“It’s kind of a long way down to Manhattan from the Bronx,” Frank explained to her, “like sometimes—when he and I would go down that way in my mom’s—his older sister’s—car, we always saw it as a little road trip of sorts.” He leaned forward to look at Charlie.

“Remember that? When we were like ten years old, Mom would drive us down to Manhattan and we acted like it was an adventure?”

“Oh, yeah! You and I were like peasants, like Hobbits, a couple of travelers, and she was the black knightess, or something like that. I don’t remember the whole shtick, but it was this whole fantasy world we came up with together. It was real cool, too!”

“I remember Kiss was in it, too,” Frank recalled, which brought a laugh out of Sam.

“Typical kids back then,” Charlie followed up with a shake of his head, “we were all into Kiss as if they were going out of style.”

“Remember when Mom helped us paint our faces with the black and white make up?” Frank laughed.

“Oh, yeah, and she put the black star over her eye!” Charlie gestured over his right eye. Sam found herself glancing back and forth between these two guys, these two pseudo brothers, and she could only wonder about the rehearsal space they had set up at down the line.

Indeed, the trip down to Manhattan was a long one: every so often, they arrived at a terminal, which shone its bright yellow lights through the windows before them, and because of that, they spent what felt like an eternity on the subway train. But she was more than elated to be there in between them.

“So there's Joey,” Frank started again at one point, “you already met him.”

“Of course,” she replied with a smile on her face.

“There's also Scott and Danny, our guitarists—founding and lead in that respective order.”

“You mean rhythm guitarist,” Charlie corrected him.

“Right.”

Sam giggled at Frank, who then sighed through his nose and bowed his head as if in shame. He then rose his head, right in time for a light above their heads to show them their next stop, right into the heart of Manhattan.

“Hey, that's us!” he proclaimed with a gesture to the light.

“This one's us?” Sam's face lit up. “Oh, boy!”

The three of them stood to their feet in unison; she clung to one of the rungs overhead to steady herself. With her other hand, she held onto the strap of her purse. The butterflies danced about her stomach as the train slowed to a stop. Frank hung close to her to steady himself. Charlie almost lost his balance but he caught himself on the pole in between them.

The doors next to them squeaked open and they bustled out of there and onto the platform; she almost ran into the little Asian woman in front of her but she caught herself right on the steady concrete. Frank and Charlie gathered behind her; the latter ran his fingers through his thick curls again.

“So which way do we go?” she asked them, to which Frank raised a finger and gestured for her to follow him. She spotted a smooth tiled staircase to their right; it led them outside to the vast block, lined with neon lights and big bold colors and skyscrapers which rose strong and high over their heads.

And then she realized they were a block away from Time Square.

“Oh, my God,” she muttered to herself.

“Gorgeous, isn't it?” Frank remarked to her with a grin on his face.

“Stunning,” she told him.

“We're right over here, Sam I am,” Charlie declared; she followed his point to the brick building across the vast dark street. They peered both ways first and then hustled across the pavement to the sidewalk on the other side. A lot like Los Angeles, but there was something else. Frank pushed the door open first and held it for her and also Charlie.

Sam was met with a hallway, the left side of which in turn took them to a vast room; at the end of the corridor stood a door and something that resembled a water fountain. A short man with long dark hair and thick straight eyebrows emerged from the room on the left.

“Hey, fellas, Frank and Charlie are here!” he called back into the room in a big Queens accent; he returned to them, and then he dropped his gaze to Sam and his face softened. “With a girl,” he added with a slight grin.

“Something you don't see often?” she asked him as she eyed his Judge Dredd shirt, baggy black jeans, and big scuffed Doc Martens.

“In our crowds, not really,” he confessed.

“Sam, this is our man, Scott,” Charlie introduced him, and Scott extended his hand towards her.

“Samantha,” she told him, “but I go by Sam, though. Or Sam I am as they—” She nodded back to Frank and Charlie. “—like to call me.”

“Sam I am, I like you already,” Scott declared as they shook hands; his grip was firm and strong, but not overly so.

“She's moved here all the way from sunny California,” Frank added.

“California! I'd like to tour over that way some day,” said Scott and he ran his fingers through his dark hair.

“I actually lived in Carson City, Nevada for a few years before I came here, though,” she clarified, “but I grew up near the L.A. area.”

“You should fit right in here then.” Those thick dark eyebrows only accentuated the smile on his face. Joey emerged from the room behind him in a little black fitted leather jacket, snug black jeans, and black, tightly laced Chuck Taylors; a short guy with a head of smooth brown hair joined him.

“Hey, there she is!” Joey declared with a little break in his voice, and a twinkle emerged in his brown eyes. Sam had her eye on the guy behind him: he had a feathery crown of hair atop his head and brilliant hazel eyes that seemed to slice right through her. She thought back to the man in her dream and yet she knew it wasn't him.

“You must be Danny,” she said with a nod of her head.

“The amazing Dan Spitz.” Joey put his arm around him which brought him close to his body.

“I wouldn't say that,” he said with a shy little smile and a slight blush on his face.

“You are amazing, Danny,” Frank insisted, and he turned to Sam with a twinkle in his eye. “You should hear his guitar tracks on the new record.”

“I'm more than eager to hear!” she declared.

“We're just about there with it,” Scott told her. “Joey just has to put down the rest of the vocals and then it goes into mastering and mixing, and then it goes out to the world.” And then his expression turned serious. “Now since you're here, you've gotta promise us you won't tell anyone about this. Like we're under agreement to not share these sorts of things with the outside world. But since you're here with us, you've gotta keep that promise, too.”

“Of course,” she said, “in fact, you wanna know something? I'll take secrets to the grave with me.”

“That's—fantastic,” Joey remarked as he let go of Dan.

“Uh, yeah,” Charlie added.

“Alright, so—I say we show her the ace up our sleeve,” Scott concluded with a flick of his hair back from his neck. He then led them into the vast room, which Sam soon realized was where they jammed together: tucked in the far corner of the room was the drum kit and a tower of speakers stacked on top of each other. The top two speakers had camoflauge covers tacked onto the fronts; next to those stood a rack of guitars much like the one in Frank's apartment. And then next to that, there was a pair of bass guitars rested upon stands. Right in the middle of the floor was a microphone stand.

She turned her head to find Charlie taking out a pair of pale wooden drum sticks from the inside pocket of his jacket. He ducked behind the drum kit: the crown of his dark hair rose up over the toms and highest cymbals. Scott scurried over to the rack for one of the guitars, an ivory white flying V with the word “NOT!” inscribed on the body; Dan took another guitar for himself. Before Frank picked out one for himself, he turned to Sam.

“Been meaning to ask you this—how old are you, by the way?” He lowered his voice to a low tone so none of them could hear him.

“I'm twenty as of the twenty first,” she said, “last Wednesday.”

“Oh, cool! Dan turned twenty two just yesterday. I'll be twenty in July, and Joey turned twenty four back in October.”

“Aw, so we're all kids,” she remarked.

“Every last one of us,” he added, and he lunged for the bass closest to him. He slung it over his head and shoulder, and lowered it down to his waist. Joey stepped up to the microphone.

“Is this thing on?” he asked into the gray head: his otherwise soft voice echoed through the room.

“You might wanna stand back,” Scott advised her. “This is gonna be loud.”

Joey pushed back a few locks of his jet black curls from his neck and his full face, and then he slipped his thumb into the belt loop of his jeans, the one closest to his hip. He cleared his throat and closed his eyes.

“You might wanna close the door, too,” Dan added, and she leaned to the right to close the door. Locked inside with the five of them. Scott then plucked the strings of his guitar at a quick pace. Loud and crunchy, so loud in fact that Sam backed up to the wall behind her.

Dan then followed suit behind Scott's playing, followed by Frank: the bass was big and full in tone, too big for that room, and so big in fact that it made her bones rattle. It felt like she was being tickled from the inside. Charlie's drums thumped inside of her chest and her stomach.

Dan's guitar shrieked so loud that she brought her hands closer to the sides of her heads. Joey bowed his head and gripped onto the microphone with his right hand; he held onto the stand with his left.

“ _White coats to bind me, out of control_...” His voice was high and soaring, quite the dissonance from his soft upstate drawl. And yet it was exhilarating and smooth, almost operatic. He was obviously made to sing. “ _I live alone inside my mind... world of confusion, air filled with noise... who says that my life's such a crime_?”

She brought her hand to her chest because his voice was such a force in and of itself, such a dissonance compared to his little slender, lanky body. A big powerful voice to contrast with such ferocious sounding music. He held the mic stand into his hip and took a step forward. His brown eyes gazed right back at her.  
“ _Trapped in this nightmare, I wish I'd wake... as my whole life begins to shake_.” His vibrato was smooth, almost delicate. “ _Four walls surround me, an empty gaze... I can't find my way outta this maze. And I don't care, fall in, fall out_...” She watched his left hand move in closer to his stomach.  
“ _Gone without a doubt_ —”

Frank and Scott followed up with “help me!” in a synchronized shout.  
“ _I can't take the blame, they don't feel the shame_...” He started laughing at the sight of her. Scott and Dan set their hands down on the strings of their guitars to silence them. Frank kept going a little bit with the bass until he looked on at her, too.

“You okay?” Scott called to her.

“Yeah—” Sam breathed out with her hand still on her chest. “Oh my god.”

“Told ya it was gonna be loud,” Joey told her through his microphone.

“He's a bomb singer, isn't he?” Frank called to her.

“He's amazing!” she declared. “Just a gorgeous voice!”

“Aw, shucks, I try my best,” Joey said with a shrug of his shoulders. “It's what I get for wantin' to be like Steve Perry from Journey.”

“Hey, Sam!” Charlie called out to her, and he gestured for her to come on over to him.

She padded across the floor, past Joey, Dan, and Frank, to find Charlie stooped behind the speakers for something. She stood right behind his rear end, and he peered back to her.

“There are some earplugs back here,” he told her, “I can't really reach 'em, though.”

“You want some girly hands to help you?” she teased him.

“Yes, please!” He ducked out of the way for her.

“Right under there,” he told her.

“Under here?” She knelt down on the carpet and reached for the box of orange ear plugs underneath the speakers.

“You see it?” he asked her.

“Yeah—” She grunted inside of her throat, and her fingers brushed against the edge of the box. She could feel him right over her body. She held onto the rim with her finger tips. His breath spread across her neck.

“Charlie...” she muttered to him.

“Huh?”

He peered down at their bodies. His hips hung close to her lower back. He kept one hand pressed onto the wall, right next to her side. If he moved his hand in closer, he would have touched her. His wrist remained right over her hip bone.

“Oh—sorry.” He backed off to let her back up. She took the box out of its hiding place, and then opened it for a pair of those orange ear plugs.

“Want some help with those?” Scott offered her.

“I got it,” she promised him as she held onto the rim of her left ear and slipped in one, and followed it with her right ear. Charlie had climbed to his feet and hung right before her face: the crotch of his jeans was right over her head.

“Charlie!” she said in a loud voice.

“Huh?”

They held still for a second, when Charlie backed off a bit and held out his hand for her. She stood to her feet and adjusted the plugs in her ears.

“Let's try this again,” Joey sounded as though he stood down the block from them. Sam hurried back to the other side of the room and stood with her back to the wall once again. They tried it again and that time she held onto the strap of her purse.

Even with the ear plugs, she could hear them perfect, especially when Joey reached the chorus: “it's a madhouse!”

Within time and the end, she found herself singing it with him. He banged his head a bit so his black curls tossed about like the tentacles of an octopus; and by the song's end, he bowed down onto his knees and extended his arm for her. She ran towards him and took out the ear plugs all the while: even though the room was quiet again, her ears whirred and stung with the contrast.

“Oh, my god, that was amazing!” she exclaimed.

“That's gonna be our first single,” Scott told her as he slung the guitar strap over his head again.

“I gotta put the vocals down for that,” Joey added, “I also need a li'l help up.” Before Sam could give him a hand, Scott reached over and helped him onto his feet.

“I think Jon might be here,” Charlie warned them, to which he put his coat back on and picked up his drum sticks.

“Jon, our manager,” Frank clarified for her as he returned his bass to the rack.

“Yeah, I wouldn't wanna be caught in here,” said Scott; he led them out of there and back into the hallway. Dan closed the door behind them, and it took her a second to realize they were still alone.

“Guess Jon's not here,” Charlie concluded as he flicked a lock of hair back from his face.

“I don't think we were supposed to be in there anyway,” Scott pointed out. He then turned to Sam next to him. “You hungry?”

“I am, yeah.”

“This room over here has a little hot plate and a fridge—although, unless you're willing to wait, Marsha—Jon's wife—can make us something to eat later on.”

“I think I can wait,” she assured him with a nod of her head.

“I could use a drink of water, though,” said Joey with a lick of his lips. He headed on over to the next room, and Scott followed, and that was when Sam caught a glimpse of a few posters on the wall. The one closest to her showed off five guys, each with long dark hair themselves. They looked like the kind of band that would jam alongside them. She wandered over to it for a better look.

“Who are those guys?” she asked Charlie.

“Who, them?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, they’re called Legacy... I think? Yeah, Legacy. They're kinda new—well, new in comparison to us. They started a couple of years ago where we started five years ago. Although I think they should change their name soon, because I swear, there’s another band with that name. Our manager said they're going to tour with us at some point.”

“They're from California, too,” Dan added.

“Yeah, that's right! They're from—somewhere in the Bay Area, I think.” Charlie turned to her. “You might be more familiar with the Bay Area than us.”

“Oh, yeah. Love San Francisco.”

The front door swung open and the Asian woman from the subway stepped inside.

“Hey, it's our new tech,” Frank declared as he stepped into the next room after Joey and Scott.

“Lots of girls for the boys!” Sam joked.

“Is Jon here yet?” she asked Charlie and Dan.

“Not yet, no,” Dan replied.

“Okay. Guess I can wait.” She adjusted the purple shawl about her shoulders and folded her arms across her chest. She eyed Sam, who then ambled over to her.

“You're working for them?” she greeted her.

“Yeah, I'm supposed to be a tech for Dan over there and also Frank.” She spoke with a low voice and like she meant business. “I start today and—I got kind of lost on the way over here. Gotta remember, it's the brick building!”

Sam chuckled at that.

“I'm Aurora,” she said with an extending of her hand.

“Samantha—I go by Sam, though. Frank and I are new neighbors.”

“Oh, that's so cool! You just move here?”

“The other day from California.”

“Really, I—moved here from San Diego just last week.”

“I grew up near L.A. but I spent the last four years in Carson City. Where do you live?”

“Down in Brooklyn. How 'bout you?”

“Up in the Bronx. How cool is this?”

“Quite cool—” Aurora leaned her head to look past Sam, who turned to find Joey walking towards them with a glass of water in one hand.

“Aurora Borealis,” he said, which got a laugh out of the both of them.

“That's me. Joey Beller-donner.”

“And—ya got me there.” Sam and Aurora both giggled at him as he took a sip of water.

“Do you know when Jon's gonna be here?”

“I don't, no,” he confessed as he held the glass before his chest. “I'm the new guy myself, havin' joined a couple of months ago—I'm tryin' to get to know these guys and everything.”

And it was right there that Sam knew she could fit right in with them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lyrics to anthrax's madhouse! 💜


	5. a new record

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _"changed the game with that digital drop,  
>  know where you was when that digital popped.  
> i stopped the world;  
> male or female, it make no difference, i stop the world!  
> world stop... carry on."_  
> -"feeling myself", nicki minaj and beyonce

“So the three of them are the ones without any solid footing here before hand,” Marsha remarked.

“Yeah, we're the new comers,” Aurora told her.

It had been a couple of hours since she and Sam had mingled into the fold with the band and with their manager, Jon, or Jonny Z as they all referred to him. A heavier gentleman with a thick scraggly black beard and horn rimmed glasses wrapped in a shabby tweed jacket; his wife Marsha looked like the type of woman Sam would see in the neighborhoods back home in Carson City with her feathery hair and big warm smile.

The two of them had whisked Sam and Aurora to the back room with all of them as if they were their long lost family. They posted up on the other side of the room nestled in between Frank and Charlie, the latter of whom put his feet up on a little footstool so Sam could have a better look of his thighs and his knees. The black fabric comprising of his jeans hugged his legs to accentuate their shape. Joey and Scott were across the room from them with empty plates rested upon their laps.

Dan breezed into the room right then with a cup of what looked like fruit punch in one hand: the bright red color appeared even more red with the fluorescent lights overhead.

“Got a li'l drinkie of sorts?” Aurora called to him.

“Oh, no, it's just punch,” he said with a smirk on his face, “it's too early for that.”

“It's gotta be a certain kinda day for that anyway,” said Charlie as he crossed his legs and set a hand on his right knee.

“Yeah, it's—it's not the kind of day for that,” Scott cracked with a raise of those thick eyebrows.

“That's not to say I don't have a flask with me, though,” Dan pointed out with a wag of his finger.

“So what's Marsha gonna make for us?” Sam asked them.

“She's got some pancakes on deck,” Frank told her, “that's as far as I know, anyway. Jon might know more than us, though.”

She looked over at Charlie right as he ran his hand up and down the inside of his thigh. She knew they hadn't been a band for very long, and yet his thighs looked tight and sinewy from playing drums, and she wondered how long he had been playing drums prior to then. Sam followed the inseam of his jeans towards the crotch, and then back down to his ankle. To think he had been thumping away earlier with those faded white sneakers: she took a second look to see the soles had worn and waned with overuse and scuffing on the ground. She eyed the shape of his right ankle and she wondered what it actually looked like underneath his white sock.

Jon emerged in the doorway with a glass of orange juice in hand and a beaming smile on his face.

“It's almost ready, gentlemen—ladies,” he nodded at Sam and Aurora. “Marsha had to bring in a second hot plate because she wanted to make more stuff for the bunch of us.”

“Got some O.J. in there, too, I see,” Aurora remarked as she stood to her feet.

“Plenty of that on the table, my dear. We forgot the coffee so just juice this morning.” Aurora and Frank followed Jon out of the room, and Dan took a seat on the right side of the room.

“You want a glass of something?” Charlie offered Sam in a low voice.

“I was actually wanting a cup of coffee,” she confessed with a shrug. “I gotta be in the right mood for juice, you know?”

“Yeah, me, too,” he said with a wrinkle of his button nose and a nod of his head: she never noticed the little cleft in his chin before until then. There was something catlike in particular about him, like he could stroke about the floor on his toes even after pounding away on those drums in the next room for their new record. His fingers were long and lanky, and even with a bit of callus on his index and middle fingers from holding onto drum sticks, they had an almost delicate look to them.

“You and I should run down the block and get ourselves a cup,” he suggested as he ran his fingers through his bangs: Sam then could see into his beady dark eyes.

“Just you and me?” she asked him.

“Yeah. There's a little coffee house right down the block from here—” He gestured behind him. “—and they make great coffee. Nice and rich and no nonsense, too.”

He then cleared his throat.

“So if you go to school here, you gotta show me around,” he said, “I never really felt the need to go to art school, but it's always been an interesting thing to think about, especially if you're a born artist like the both of us.”

“What about art school?” Dan interjected once he took a swig of punch.

“Li'l Sam I am here is taking art school into consideration,” Charlie explained.

“Oh, cool! I've thought of going to school myself, but for another reason.”

“And what would that be?” Sam asked.

“Engineering of some kind. I dunno—I like messing around with gadgets and things.”

“Danny's like the mad professor around here,” Scott explained.

“Or like MacGyver,” Joey added.

“Yeah, yeah! Like MacGyver!” Scott's face lit up at that. “His old band—our friends Overkill, based out of New Jersey—all have makeshift amps crafted out from like household materials all because of him. And in fact, the amp he's got right now is made of an old household iron and the wiring from an old television set.”

“How'd you manage that?” Sam asked Dan with a bit of a chuckle.

“A magician never reveals his secrets,” he pointed out with a wag of his finger and yet another swig of punch. Sam then returned to Charlie, who flashed her a wink. Within seconds, that warm aroma of pancakes floated into the room. Fresh made pancakes with lots of syrup and a bit of butter, followed by a little Asian lady with a beaming smile upon her lovely face.

“Oh, my God, that smells so good,” Aurora remarked as she rested her free hand on her stomach.

“Tell us about it!” Scott proclaimed as he clambered to his feet. Charlie and Sam followed him and Joey out into the next room for a plate of breakfast. Marsha had done the works for them with the pancakes, all light and fluffy even from a momentary glance there in the doorway, and she also whipped up some eggs and bacon.

“Alright, kids, there's not a lot of eggs and bacon here so if you'd like some, take it easy on it,” she said in a single breath. “Who wants some?”

“I’ll take an egg,” said Scott as he lifted his plate towards her. Meanwhile, the three of them took stacks of pancakes: Sam wondered if there were any blueberries or raspberries on hand to accompany her cakes, but all Marsha had with her at the moment was a rather large bottle of maple syrup twice the size of Charlie’s head.

Once they were all snuggled back into the room, Frank turned to Sam and Aurora.

“So—I think we can talk about it a little bit.”

“Talk about what?” Charlie asked him, puzzled.

“You know,” said Frank as he picked up a bite of buttered pancakes.

“If you're happy and you know it, eat it down,” Scott chanted in a singsong voice, to which Joey gulped down a rather large bite of pancake. Aurora picked up a bite for herself.

“Oh, that!” Charlie declared. Then his expression turned serious. “I thought Jonny doesn’t want us to.”

“I was just talking to him,” Frank explained with a gesture towards the doorway, “he told us we could share as long as these two girlies here vow to keep their lips sealed.”

“I vow to,” said Sam, complete with a raise of her hand as if taking an oath.

“Yeah, me, too—“ Aurora reached over to give her a high five. They locked fingers and shook hands as if to seal the deal.

“Okay.” Frank and Charlie looked at one another with knowing glances.

“The record is called _Spreading the Disease_ ,” the latter said to them in a low voice. “It's actually our second one.”

“Our first one was _Fistful of Metal_ , which was with our old singer Neil,” Frank added.

“What happened with him?” asked Aurora.

“We let him go,” Scott explained once he swallowed down his bite of pancakes. “He fired our original bassist—Danny Lilker, the guy before Frankie, and one of my best friends—without telling me and Charlie about it before hand.”

“Wow, what the hell,” Sam declared.

“Yeah! That was my reaction, too. So Charlie and I were like 'Neil, you gotta go, man. That was—that was just shitty, dude.' So we got Frankie and then a guy named Matt Fallon, but he couldn't tour with us.”

“And then I came along!” Joey decreed with a grin on his face.

“And then along came a spider by the name of Joey Belladonna,” Frank joked as he took another bite of pancakes.

“Why did Neil even fire Danny anyways?” Aurora asked Scott, to which he looked across the room at Charlie with a puzzled look on his face.

“I don't actually remember,” Scott confessed. “Do you remember, Charlie?”

“Something like... Danny being too tall in comparison to him, or something like that?” Charlie replied with a shake of his head, and that brought a laugh out of both Sam and Aurora.

“Danny was too tall and kinda flaky, too,” Scott reluctantly said. “Like he had that whole belief of grandeur that some people get when they set out to do something creative. That whole thing where you want to make something but work ethic is not your strong point.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah,” Sam nodded her head.

“I guess Neil just kinda ran out of patience with him,” Charlie continued with a shrug of his shoulders.

“And then we got rid of Neil as kind of a retaliation of sorts,” Scott said in a soft voice. “'Cause—you know—”

“Danny was your best friend,” Sam recalled, and his face fell.

“He came up with our name, too,” he continued, “we were walking home from school one day, and he told me, 'I learned about a disease called anthrax today in biology class.' And he explained it a little, how the spores remain dormant in soil for centuries and causes extreme respiratory failure. I told him it just sounds evil, like the perfect name for a metal band.”

“He wrote most of the music for a lot of songs for us, too,” Charlie added, “like there's a couple of songs on this new record that are courtesy of him. The poor dude was lazy but a badass song writer.”

“What happened to him?” asked Aurora.

“Who, Danny?” Charlie asked her.

“Yeah.”

“He formed a band of his own called Nuclear Assault. They jam here after we do—I think they're coming over here in a little while.”

“What about Neil?” Sam followed up.

“No clue,” Scott admitted with a shrug of his shoulders. “We let him go and then he fell off the face of the earth.”

“Anyways, this new record,” Charlie pressed on, “— _Spreading the Disease_ —we're aiming for it to be released come October. Which means Joey has to lay down the last bit of vocals in the next couple of days so we can polish it up and make it all nice and good and... good and nice.”

“Wrap it all up with a little bow on top,” Aurora cracked.

“Exactly!” That brought a chuckle out of Frank.

Within time, they finished their stacks of pancakes, albeit with Joey going back for seconds. Sam watched him walk towards the doorway with the plate and the fork down by his hip: he was slender, such that his waist was so very thin and sparse that she could see his hip bones underneath the dark denim waist of his jeans. And there he was, heading back for seconds. She wondered if he could fit thirds in that flat stomach of his.

And he returned with a small stack of five, complete with a lot of butter and a dollop of syrup.

“My goodness,” she remarked to him.

“They're good pancakes, aren't they, Joe?” Dan asked as he brought the glass back up to his lips for one final swig of punch.

“They're spectacular!” he declared in that strong, odd upstate accent.

“How many is that now?” Scott asked him.

“Ten. Well, I'm real hungry, too.”

“Think I'll have more, too,” Frank muttered as he stood to his feet to fetch more.

Sam turned her head to Charlie once more: he mopped up some of the syrup with his final bite of pancake.

“You wanna get some coffee?” he offered her in a low voice. “Get some coffee and then bounce back here?”

“Yeah.” She turned to the rest of them. “You guys want some coffee?”

“I'd like a cuppa Joey,” Joey declared with a straight face.

“A cuppa Joey!” Aurora giggled at that.

“I'm good, thank you,” said Scott with a wave of his hand.

“Yeah, me, too,” Dan chimed in.

“Okay—” Charlie said with his mouth full; and he gestured for Sam to follow him out of there. She picked up her purse and they passed Marsha and Frank at the hot plates; Jon had disappeared off somewhere, but the two of them were fixated on heading outside. Charlie adjusted the lapels on his jacket and then he held the door open for her. Sam bowed her head and pinched her eyes shut for a second against the biting cold. He ran his hands down the front of his jacket and then the pockets of his jeans.

“Got money?” she asked him.

“Yeah—although I think I might need a little help, though.”

“We'll play it by ear,” she suggested as she clutched onto the strap of her purse.

“Alright, c'mon, Sam—” Charlie coaxed her. She followed close behind him as they walked side by side to the coffee house in question. Since he stood at a much greater height than her, his legs were much longer, and thus, he walked ahead of her and she had to chase after him at one point. It was tricky given all the food she had eaten before then, and thus he lingered back a bit for her to catch up with him.

“You with me?” he called back to her.

“Yeah, I’m just...”

He then slowed to a near stop for her to walk parallel to him, which brought a smile out of her. The cold New York winds billowed back a few extra curled tendrils of his hair from the side of his head all the while.

“You guys are literally not what I expected to come out of New York City,” she confessed over the noise of the street next to them.

“What, 'cause of the whole trope about New Yorkers being rude?” he asked her; he slowed up a bit so she could catch up to him once again.

“If I'm honest,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders.

“Eh, I think it's because most people—and by most people, I mean the people from around your neck of the woods—aren't so used to bluntness. That’s the one way I could describe New York is people here are blunt, like honest about things. We give no fucks, for lack of a better word.”

“You don't care about other people's opinions of you,” she concluded as they reached a crosswalk.

“Exactly! We care enough that it loops back around to uncaring.” The light turned green and Charlie led her across the black pavement to the quaint coffee house on the corner up ahead there. Next door, she spotted a shop with a sign consisted of a paint brush and a palette.

“Hey, there's an art shop here, too!” she declared.

“There sure is! It's kinda expensive, though.”

Once again, Charlie held the door for her and she padded into the cozy, warm coffee house. To her left was a nook surrounded by a warm mural of the New York City skyline, which in turn melded into the Philadelphia, Chicago, and New Orleans skylines; underneath the mural stood a series of little black tables. She was inclined to snag the table closest to the bay window but she remembered they were headed on back to the rehearsal space afterwards, so she shelved the thought.

“What would you like?” Charlie asked her, and she looked on at the chalk boards up on the brick wall behind the cashier.

“Oh, my. Uh, chai latte?”

“Good choice! I think I'll have that, too. We'll get Mr. Bellardini an espresso.”

“Mister who?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“Bellardini,” he repeated. “Joey's real last name is Bellardini—Belladonna is like a warping of it, and also because it sounds ferocious.”

“Belladonna, like... deadly night shade.” She grinned at him at the sound of that.

“Exactly!” Charlie took out his wallet and paid for their drinks. They congregated at the end of the counter in anticipation; he huddled closer to her with his hands tucked into his coat pockets.

“Are you cold?” she asked him.

“A little bit, yeah,” he confessed. “Lived here my whole life and there are times where I can't stand how cold it gets sometimes.”

“Well, at least here back East, you've got actual defined seasons,” she pointed out. “This time of year back in the Golden State, it can either be sunny or foggy and—unless you're up in the mountains, like in Yosemite or where I'm from originally, Lake Elsinore, there's not a single flake of snow to be found anywhere. If I'm honest, it gets a little obnoxious by the time March rolls around.”

“And what about northern Nevada?”

“Nevada, we can get a foot of snow one day and then the very next day, it'll be sunny and up in the nineties. Crazy.”

“Wow.” He raised his eyebrows at that.

“I remember a couple of years ago, we got a good sized snowstorm in the middle of May. And the snowflakes were huge, Charlie—they were like the size of dinner plates. And I remember they floated down from the sky and made these soft little noises when they landed on the ground. It was almost surreal.”

“There won't be any of that here,” the barista behind the counter told her with a stunned look on his face.

“Uh, yeah, I was just gonna say—we've got snowflakes of reasonable size here,” Charlie added with a chuckle. “Here and upstate, too, in case you wanna go up there to see where Joey's from.”

“Maybe at some point, I'll wanna take a trip there,” she confessed with a shrug of her shoulders. The barista set the first two cups of chai latte on the counter before them.

“And the espresso's comin' right now—”

And he brought the little parchment cup of espresso to the counter, to which Charlie and Sam both thanked him in unison. He held both his and Joey's coffee in both hands as she pushed the door open for him. They made their way out to the street, where he turned to look back at the art shop. Sam took a sip of her latte—such bliss! Warm and spicy for such a blustery day as that.

He then returned to her with a thoughtful look on his round face.

“You wanna get some nicer drawing paper?” he offered her as she blew on the little gap in the lid to cool off the coffee some.

“Well—I guess I could use some...” she confessed with a shrug. “I got that one drawing pad back at my place, but it’s not too much, though. Why, you got enough left on you?”

“Yeah, c’mon, I’ll get you a thing of paper...” Charlie gestured for her to follow him into the art shop next door. Once again, she held the door for him and they stepped into the bright lit front room, which was stacked to the brim with paints, pencils, palettes, canvases, both of the stretched and plain untreated type; art and crafts kits, art supplies for kids, art supplies for adults, little knick knacks, and pieces of styrofoam. Past the front stood four aisles: the first of which had pads of paper for watercolor, drawing, cartooning, acrylics, and pastels, as well as bottles of paint, bottles of ink, ink pens, markers, and pencil kits.

Charlie set his cup of coffee down on a blank spot on the shelf so he could pick out a little black leather bound journal on the shelf before him. He opened to the first page and he ran his fingers down the surface of the paper.

“I'll get one for myself, too,” he told her, “this one's cheap-o and feels really good, like it can hold pencil and ink really well.”

She knelt down before the shelves with the journals for one herself. There was a hard cover black one near the floor that caught her eye because the pages were perforated. She picked it up and did the same thing as he did, and touched the first page herself. The paper was smooth, almost silken, to the touch. She pictured herself drawing with those black ink pens over her head in this journal.

Indeed, she took a set of those black ink pens off of the rack and examined them for herself. There was seven of them inside, ranging from the slimmest of measurements to one that resembled a paint brush.

“I'll pay for these books,” Charlie announced.

“And I'll get these pens for myself,” she said as she offered to hold onto his cup of coffee with her free hand; she tucked the pens into her other hand so they were pressed against her cup and thus, no chance of escape.

“I got plenty of those at home,” he added with a wag of his finger, and then he picked up his cup from the shelf again.

Once they had paid for their new art supplies, they returned outside to the street and doubled back to the rehearsal space. All the while, Sam took a sip from her cup of latte. Even though she blew on it to cool it down a bit, everything about it was perfect. The perfect balance of spice and cream, the perfect temperature, everything: she relished in it all the way back to the building, just in time for the sun to emerge from behind the cold gray clouds blanketing the sky.

“So are you guys gonna be alright?” she asked Charlie.

“Oh yeah! Why, you leavin' us already?”

“My parents are gonna swing by my place soon. We're gonna do more stuff together.”

“Oh, I see! Well—you know where to find us. And you know where to find me and Frankie, too.”

“Where does Scott and Dan live?”

“Scott lives up the street from here with his girlfriend—I forget where Danny lives. He could probably tell you if you ask him...” His voice trailed off as Joey's black curls emerged in the doorway.

“Is this for me?” he asked Charlie with a lopsided smile on his face; Charlie handed him his cup of espresso, complete with the plastic bag holding his new journal dangling off of his wrist.

“A cuppa Joey,” he said in a singsong voice. Sam skirted past them to meet up with Aurora again, and she spotted another series of posters on the wall, albeit a series that she had missed before. There was that band Legacy again, and that time she took a closer look to them. Another quintet and yet nothing about them caught her eye, and thus she looked past them at the promotional picture of the band behind her.

Anthrax, they called themselves. They were congregated inside of what looked like an old abandoned warehouse somewhere: on the left stood Dan with his feathery crown of dark hair and his black flying V guitar down by his waist; next to him was Frank, whose hair obscured his eyes in shadow, and a big ivory white bass guitar; next to him stood Joey with a sweet little smile on his face and the same black leather jacket he wore that morning; followed by Charlie with his body turned to the side, and last but not least on the far right stood Scott in ripped faded jeans, those big black boots, and a pure white flying V guitar, which he held out before his body.

She almost wanted to laugh at them because the jovial expressions on their faces clashed with their darkness and that loud song they played for her. But she took another sip of coffee instead, and that was when she spotted Aurora at the end of the corridor with a clipboard in hand.

“There you are,” Sam called out to her as she made her way closer to her.

“Here I am,” Aurora replied with a smirk on her face. “What's up with you? What'cha got?”

“So I'm thinking maybe I can definitely go to art school here,” she started, “I got myself a new drawing journal and some black ink with me. I can probably do a challenge for myself.”

“You should do it all!” Aurora insisted. “Just live and let live here in New York. You're an artist in the Big Apple after all.”

“Ha, I just got an idea.” Sam snapped her fingers.

“What's that?”

“Because I'm a little shaky on human anatomy, I could get one of the guys here to pose for me, but—I don't really know, though. It sounds like their schedule's gonna get pretty hectic here pretty soon.”

“Well, if you go to school later this year,” Aurora pointed out, “then maybe you can do something with that idea of yours. You know, if their record comes out in October, we could do something at the release party. Maybe you can get Joey to pose for you.”

“Why Joey of all of them?” She was taken aback by that.

“He's the exotic one and—have you seen how he looks at you?” Aurora had a twinkle in her eye upon saying that, to which Sam rolled her eyes.

“Oh, please.”

“C'mon, Sam—when we were in the room earlier, he was totally checking you out when you were walking out with Charlie to get yourself a drink. I watched him do it. I watched his eyes caress over you like he was watching a stripper.”

“He just seems friendly, though,” Sam insisted. “I mean, surely, there's a difference between the two.”

“Between being friendly and being flirty?” Aurora asked her with a befuddled look on her face.

“Yeah. Like there's gotta be something to differentiate the two.”

“When you see him again tomorrow, you should try and flirt with him a little bit. See if he bats a lash at all. I tried flirting with a guy like him back home in San Diego and I kinda learned the hard way.”

She then peered behind her to make sure they were out of earshot from Frank and Charlie.

“Have you—” Aurora stopped in her tracks, and she dropped her gaze to Sam's waist.

“Have I what?”

“You know.”

“No, I don't.”

“You know—” She gestured down.

“Oh, you mean—touch myself?” Sam asked in a low voice.

“Yeah.” Aurora raised her eyebrows at that so Sam could see the twinkle in her eye.

“I have, yeah.”

“Well, if you've done that, then this should be a breeze for you.”

“How so?”

“If you've touched your own lips, then you have the confidence to flirt with that little brown boy.”

Sam swallowed out of nervousness. The last time she really touched herself seemed so long ago, even though she had done it before. It was such a strange distant memory to her, and she knew of the feeling. If her memory rang true, it was that she had no recollection of even enjoying it. Her fingers had wandered their way to her lips and it felt as though she had been shocked. It made her a bit squeamish to even so much as think about. But Aurora had a point, and it was something to consider on the subway ride home.

“By the way, is it okay if I could get your phone number?” Sam offered. “My phone's not hooked up yet, but I feel like if I'm gonna be hangin' out with these boys here, and you're working for them, we're gonna run into each other often.”

“Oh, yeah, sure! I just barely got my phone hooked up, so it's a brand new number. Add to that, we're both California girls, too. If we're gonna survive out here, we've gotta stick together. Here—let me see if I can find a blank piece of paper... ah, here we go!”

Aurora took her pen and scribbled down her number on the bottom of a blank sheet of paper at the base of the clipboard. Careful not to tear it too much, she separated it from the rest of the paper and handed it to Sam. She pocketed the number and caught her new journal before it could fall to the floor at the same time.

“Alright! Thank you so much, Aurora,” she said with a smile.  
“By the way, where do you live again?”

“I live way over in the Bronx. Charlie, Frankie, and I took the subway here together.”

“Long way back. I'd drive ya but—” She held up the clipboard.

“I'll leave you to it,” she said one last time. Sam thanked Marsha for breakfast and the boys had retreated back into the room to tend to the remainder of their new record. She left the building and returned to the subway terminal with stars in her eyes and her feet lighter than air. The move to New York City was a good choice!

She boarded the subway and headed on back to her apartment up in the Bronx, which gave her enough time to reminisce on Aurora's suggestion. She never saw Joey eyeing her so she had to take her word for it. And yet he seemed so standoffish, but not rude. He was definitely of the quiet breed.

It could have been from the fact he was new and by the sound of things, he had been brought into the fold with haste. He even said he was just trying to get to know the four of them as well as contribute to the new record. Maybe he was interested, or maybe he was just yearning for a cup of coffee because his face lit up at the sight of the espresso in Charlie's hand.

It was something she thought about on the long ride back up to the Bronx. She emerged from the subway just in time to finish her chai latte and before her parents arrived at her doorstep again.

She made her way back up to her room, where she was greeted by all that new furniture and a place to sit for the time being. She also kept thinking about Aurora's whole sentiment at the end there: “if you've touched your own lips, then you have the confidence to flirt with him.” She wondered what that even meant, especially when the only other time she did that, the feeling left her uneasy instead of aroused.

“What the hell am I going to say to him, though?” she muttered to herself. She looked down at the crotch of her jeans, and she recalled looking on at Charlie's pants, as well. It was in there: it needed coaxing out, surely.

Indeed, she began to picture the conversation between the two of them the next day, or whenever they saw each other again. He strolled into the room with that lopsided grin on his little round face, which made his brown eyes twinkle and glimmer as if made of diamond. He took a seat next to her on the couch.

“What's up?” he asked her.

“I wanted to ask you—” She swallowed a bit, to which she tilted her neck back.

“Are you okay?” he asked her, bemused.

“Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm okay...” She gazed on at him with wide eyes. “I—I have kind of a pain in my neck, though,” was all she could sputter out.

“Oh, shit. You want me to get sump'n for ya?” Joey gestured to the room next to them.

“No, no, it's okay. But that's real sweet of you, though.” And yet her daydream of him right there never went any further than that. Maybe that was too much, even from a daydream. But all she saw of him was a man in black seated next to her on the couch and yet she had no idea what to do with him.

The last time she did touch herself was in fact a long time ago, too. Things had changed and she wasn't the unsettled teenager from before. She was alone, too: perhaps her parents weren't going to show up until at least another hour.

She undid her jeans and peeled back her panties.

If you've touched your own lips, you have the confidence to talk to him.

With a nibble on her bottom lip, she reached down for a feel. It was a little tricky from sitting on the couch, and so she swung her legs around and lay down on her back, and tried again. They were smooth and soft, like a pair of actual lips. Nothing too spectacular, but it was a new record for her. With every gentle touch from her index and middle fingers, she wondered why the whole thing left her feeling uneasy before. So she tried a lighter caress, courtesy of her index finger. That sent a chill up her spine, one so strong, she sat upright and took her hand out. The image of Joey next to her had vanished into the ether, as well.

She couldn’t feel it.

A knock on the door took her aback and she knew she would have to try it some more to get her head around it.


	6. soup and numbers

It had been a week since Sam had settled into her apartment in the Bronx, and it had been a few days since she had hooked up her phone to call up Aurora. It took her a few days for her to even so much as have a straight up conversation with her given the workload Jon had left her with as part of their crew. She soon found her last name was Young, and she was a second generation American.

“My paternal grandparents came over here from North Korea,” she explained, “while my maternal grandparents are from South Korea. And then when my parents met, they went down to Southern California together. Like a pair of forbidden lovers which completely bonded the entire Korean peninsula.”

Indeed, her parents were plotting on moving out to New York City, much like how Ruben and Esmé were plotting on doing that very same thing as well. They had told her about their plan during their last round of dinner with her before they returned to Carson City for the time being.

“Everyone's moving out to New York,” Sam chuckled at the thought.

In the meantime, it was in fact the coldest winter she had dealt with since she moved away from Carson City. After spending the morning with the bunch of them, the snow had begun to fall. And it continued to fall even after the sun had gone down: the golden lights from the street lit up the steady blanket of snowflakes in a warm amber glow, so warm in fact that she snuggled under the covers. When she awoke the next morning to a near six inches of snow on the sidewalk, and Emile almost eating it after he slipped on a patch of ice downstairs, she knew she wasn't on the West Coast anymore.

She remembered what she and Charlie had talked about in the coffee house the few days before, between the snow and also with her art. She knew she would have to make her way over to the nearest art school and enlist herself within the next day or so, but to do that meant having to wade through all of that intense snow. But she wasn't on the West Coast anymore: she had to put down her head and pull through it if she wanted to go anywhere and do anything significant in this weather. Just brave it with the hope that she wouldn't freeze to death. Indeed, when she got a minute with Emile, he told her about the schools around the City and she figured it was best to take the subway down to the school in Brooklyn: she figured she would head down that way anyways to visit Aurora and the boys.

She put on her heaviest black coat, her worn down knee high boots, two pairs of socks, her black gloves, and her heavy red and white knit scarf: if there was one other thing she needed besides a new pair of boots, it was something to protect her head and her ears from the intense bitter northeast cold. Despite the cold, she managed to make her way to the subway terminal up the block from the complex and find her way back down to Brooklyn. She hoped whatever money she could pick up from attending school would help her cover the cost of taking the subway.

But Sam rode all the way down with her hand up on the rung and her other hand on her purse strap. A California girl cozying her way into New York City with her heavy black clothes and serious expression.

If there was one other thing she needed to adjust to about riding the subway, it was the fact riding such a long distance left her feeling dizzy from the steady continual sway of the train on those slick silvery rails. Indeed, when she stepped off the train onto the concrete platform, her head spun and she caught herself on the brick pillar next to her to steady herself. Passengers strode on past her but she wanted to be alone anyway.

She was greeted by a blast of warm air through the vent over her head as well as a rush of cold from the tunnel behind her. After she caught her balance, and the train had drifted away, she pressed on to the stairs and back out to the sharp New York cold.

She was about a block away from the rehearsal space, which meant after she enrolled herself and filled out the paper work, she could swing by and see if they were in that day.

Or so she thought because it was all what she wanted.

She was in the admissions office for about an hour and a half because it was a difficult school to get into and she also had to go through all of the pithy nonsense surrounding financial aid. Because she had only lived in New York for a week, she needed to scrounge around a scholarship or two to help her out.

“We'll have to see a portfolio of sorts, though,” the counselor pointed out to her before her interview was up. “And once we have it, we'll begin the admission process.”

“Most of it's packed up but I'll try and get something together as soon as possible,” she vowed.

“Sounds good! Until then, welcome aboard, Miss Shelley.”

It was almost noon by the time Sam stepped back outside to the street, lined with a thick white blanket of snow and crushed ice. The sun remained hidden behind the thick dark clouds overhead, and yet even with the darkness of the day, she was able to recognize that dark head of hair from down the block. She padded up the sidewalk and she could feel the snow getting to her feet through that worn leather making up her boots.

Dark head of hair accompanied by three rich shades of violet on her body, the crown of her head, and on her hands.

“Aurora Borealis!” she called out to her, to which Aurora turned around with a set of keys in one hand and a flabbergasted look on her face, and then she smiled at the sight of Sam.

“Hey! I wasn't expecting to see you here.”

“I was just moseying my way into the art school down the block here,” Sam told her.

“Oh, cool! I'm going on lunch break right now.”

“Is it okay if I join?”

“Oh, absolutely! You know what they say, the more the merrier.” Aurora held onto her keys and she led Sam to the corner up ahead, where her little car awaited. Two guys wrapped in heavy dark coats congregated by the rear end.

“And Charlie and Frankie!” Sam declared.

“Hey, girly-cue!” Frank greeted her.

“Girly-cue?” she chuckled.

“Like curlicue, but different.”

“She might officially become an art student here pretty soon,” Aurora announced, to which Charlie's face lit up at that.

“Oh, boy!”

“Yeah, I had an interview just a little bit ago. I have to sign up for free money and give them a sample of my work.”

“Typical,” said Frank with a shrug of his shoulders. “But necessary, though.”

“So where we going to eat lunch at?”

“There's a pho place a few blocks from here,” Charlie told her, “and if you're curious—she suggested it.”

“I might be Korean, but I do like a good dish of pho,” Aurora said with a little smirk on her face; she climbed into the driver's seat right then.

“Shotgun!” Sam called out as she darted to the smooth car door.

“Damn it!” Frank and Charlie spat in unison; she climbed in and closed the door next to her. Even with her gloves on, she rubbed her hands together. The inside of Aurora's car was warm, cozy, dry, and smelled of ginger with a faint tinge of lemons.

“Yeah, I'm not used to it, either,” Aurora confessed as she stuffed her hands into her coat pockets. Frank and Charlie climbed into the cozy back seat behind them.

“Is this your car?” Sam asked her.

“It's actually my dad's car—but he's letting me borrow it for the time being.”

“You ladies might not need a car to get around here,” Frank told her, “that's the beauty of living in New York City.”

“Yeah, you can get just about anywhere via subway or the bus,” Charlie added. “You can go all over the City, and you can go over to Philadelphia, or New Jersey, or D.C., or even over to Boston if you're willing with either of those.”

“And since you girls live where you live in the City, you can get just about anything, too,” Frank continued; Sam caught the sound of him pulling up the zipper on his jacket. Aurora fired up the car so it could warm up and let out some of that warm air through the heater vents on the dashboard.

“Have either of you tried New York pizza?” Frank asked them. “Like real authentic New York pizza?”

“Not yet, no,” Sam confessed.

“Oh, man, you girls are gonna be in for a treat when it happens,” Charlie promised them as he strapped himself in. “You're gonna love the pho here at this little place, too.”

“Made by a little old lady from Saigon!” Frank chimed in. Aurora drove them up the block to the warm lit restaurant on the street corner, where they were greeted by a strong blanket of warmth and an aromatic cocktail of ginger and cooked noodles. The four of them clustered into the cozy booth in the closest corner on the left side of the room; Sam snuggled next to Frank, who had taken his seat next to the window. He bowed his head so his lush dark hair sprawled over his shoulders, and he shivered from the sudden chill courtesy of the window next to them. Before them stood four silver spoons on folded white cloth napkins.

Sam wanted to hear that new record of theirs—she drew a blank on what it was called.

“So how's the album coming along?” she asked him in a low voice.

“Almost done!” he proclaimed. “Joey lay down the vocals for the songs the past few days.” He turned his head to Aurora on the other side of the table. “You heard him, didn't you, Aurora?”

“Oh, yeah!” she said with a raise of her eyebrows. “I couldn't believe it when I heard him. Just this big—huge voice resonating through the walls of the hallway. I actually had to stop what I was doing to pay attention to the playback in the next room.”

“You sure it was because of him or because of me?” Charlie teased her.

“You're a given,” she retorted with a chuckle. “But I heard Joey's voice and I was just enthralled by the sound of it. The way he hit those high notes and kept going higher and higher at points. He's—weirdly quick, too. Like, he changes notes at the drop of a hat. It's stunning and even kind of... I want to say hypnotic.”

Within time, they put in their orders for bowls of pho courtesy of the aforementioned little old lady from Vietnam in latex gloves: Aurora asked for a bowl of vegetarian soup, while Sam and Charlie asked for chicken in their bowls, and Frank asked for beef.

“I wonder how this goes,” Sam confessed in a low voice as the other woman in there brought them little white china cups of tea.

“It's like magic,” Frank told her with a twinkle in his eye. She turned her head to look on at the calluses on his fingers. Surely, there had to be more to this scene than previously thought. But she returned to the sight of the old Vietnamese woman with a warm thoughtful smile on her face and her salt and pepper hair tied up in a bun behind her head; she lingered behind the counter, but she stood behind a break in the wall where they could watch her lay out some beef and some chicken in separate bowls. She poured in scalding hot broth in either bowl, and it was there that Sam realized that cooked the meat. Behind her stood a couple of pots of noodles.

She poured those into the bowls as well as some chopped vegetables and, once those were done, she picked out another bowl for Aurora's vegetarian soup.

Four bowls of pho made up within a few minutes time, and the other woman in there brought each of them over to their table. Charlie thanked her as they picked up their spoons and dipped in at the same time. Sam took a bite of the chicken, which she could tell had been cooked all the way through from the hot broth. Perfect mixture of ginger fused with vegetables and another spice that she was unsure of. It was warm and delicate, perfect for a cold day like that.

“Oh my god, this is so good,” Aurora declared as she picked up a biteful of noodles, carrots, bok choi, and a pea pod.

“Told you!” Frank proclaimed.

“So, now that you have the music tracks down, what's next?” Sam asked them.

“Goes into production now,” said Charlie once he swallowed down his bite of pho. “It's gotta be mastered and mixed and polished up and whatnot. That's the part that takes a long time.”

“So because of that, we should expect it to come out some time in the fall,” Frank added as he took another large bite of beef, which, too, had been cooked to perfection courtesy of that broth.

“Just in time for me to start school!” Sam declared.

“Just in time for school to start!” Charlie's face lit up at the sound of that. He raised his cup of tea for the bunch of them to make a toast with him. Frank brought his cup closer to his, and Aurora and Sam followed suit. Their tea cups clinked together and they drank it down in unison: the tea was nice, sweet, and warm, like a gentle hug straight out of southeast Asia. Sam set down the cup of tea and then she took another bite of pho.

She nestled down in the seat next to Frank. To think she was mingling so easily there in New York City, and she believed she was going to be a complete outlier upon arriving.

They were the only ones in that little cafe the whole entire time they ate those large bowls of warm Vietnamese soup: Sam caught Charlie picking up his bowl for a lick on the bottom.

“You like the soup, Char?” Frank cracked as he set his spoon down on the napkin on the table.

“It's amazing,” Charlie quipped with a wipe of his mouth from the napkin before him.

“Satisfying, too,” Aurora added as she leaned back in her seat.

“So you gotta get back to work now,” Frank spoke out of the blue.

“I do, yeah! I have tomorrow off, though, so maybe the four of us can hang out together.”

“You just wanna find any excuse to chill with Charlie here,” Frank teased her.

“Aw,” Sam showed her a smile.

“Charlie's nice to me,” Aurora confessed with a shrug of her shoulders. He looked on at her like a prince with his eyebrows raised up into his wavy bangs and his dark eyes wide so as to resemble deep pools.

“What'chu gettin' at?” he sputtered.

“I wanna get wit' 'chu,” she retorted.

“But we're not a couple, though.”

“You guys'd make a cute couple,” Sam pointed out as she picked up her cup of tea once again for a final drink.

“Ooh, yeah, they would!” Frank joined in with a twinkle in his eye and a big grin on his face.

“You just wanna see me with an Asian chick,” Charlie spat.

“Remember the last time you hung out with an Asian chick?”

“Yeah, I almost lost my virginity that night, too—oh, wait, I wasn't supposed to mention that.” Charlie brought a hand to his mouth, but the words had already left his lips at that point. Sam burst out laughing and Frank bowed his head to keep his otherwise big jovial laugh quiet, but it was useless. Aurora gaped at him for a few seconds before she started laughing herself.

“You wanna share, Charlie?” she demanded.

“I don't think this is the best place for that, though, Aurora,” he said in a low tone. Frank covered his mouth with both hands to keep his laughter down.

“I have time, you know,” she quipped. “I don't have to clock back in for another twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, and not only that, but I'm kinda curious now,” Sam joined in, to which she folded her arms over the top of the table.

“Oh, c'mon, Sam!”

“It'll keep Frankie over here from busting a stitch,” Aurora pointed out. Charlie shot Frank a mortified glance; Frank, meanwhile, gazed on at him with his face gone as red as a cherry tomato and his hands clasped over his mouth. Every so often, his shoulders quivered with the impending laughter.

“Okay,” Charlie said. He extended his hands over the top of the table. His long lanky fingers fanned out like the feathers of a male peacock. “This was two years ago, back when I had first joined the band—like literally right when I joined the band. I got off the phone with Scott and Danny the night before and they told me to get my ass in because they were beginning work on something for the label. So I was in the space first thing the next morning with my drum kit. Frankie was still in school, but he told about this Asian girl in his class who had the hots for him. I mean, she was totally nuts about him—Frankie couldn't hardly get her off of his ass. She was a little older than him, too: Frankie was still seventeen and she was eighteen so of course he told me about her.”

“What'd you do?” asked Aurora.

“Well after rehearsal and after Scott showed me the songs they had on deck, and I had gone home to try them out for myself, I ran into her. She was about your height, Aurora—but she wasn't nearly as pretty as you, though. She asked me, 'hey, do you know Frank?' And I was like 'Frank—Bello?' And she nodded her head and I was like, 'why, what's up?' And she said, 'When's he turning eighteen?' And I said, 'Why's it matter?' And she goes, 'I wanna have a little fun with him on his birthday, so tell me when it is', and I go, 'you know, I'm his brother.'” Sam giggled at that.

“And she goes, 'oh, really?' and her face lit up at the sound of it, too,” Charlie continued, “and I nodded my head at her real slowly like this.” He nodded his head at a slow pace with a nervous smile on his face all the while.

“I dunno if you ladies ever felt the lust from someone before—but I stood before her and I could feel the attraction from her. It was just oozing out from her—it was like a pulse of sorts. I went on to say that Frankie might not even be available come the summer, too: he might be going off to college to play baseball by the time his birthday rolls around.”

Frank brought his hands to his mouth again.

“So what'd you do?” asked Sam.

“I told her, 'if you're feelin' it right now, I can do the honors for you right here.' And she goes, 'right here?' Stunned, just like that. And I nodded at her with a grin on my face. And so I took her hand and I led her to like this little nook off to the side—we were standing outside of the school when this whole thing went down, so I took her over to a nook behind the cafeteria for a little meeting of east and west, if you know what I mean.” Charlie then brought his hands to his face, to which Frank began laughing again.

“How'd it go?” Sam pressed on, that time in a lower voice. Charlie shook his head behind his hands and Frank bowed his head towards the top of the table.

“Charlie, how'd it go?” Aurora asked him as a nervous grin appeared with her. He then lifted his face from his palms so he could rub his eyes.

“Me,” he said in a low voice. “Me!” He then leaned back in his seat to point at himself. “Imagine me, this dumbass right here—this, this complete dumbass right here—taking this Asian chick who's barely legal and a year older than my underage nephew slash kid brother back to an alleyway to pop both of our cherries. She looks at me—” He closed his eyes and ran his tongue along his bottom lip. “—goes, 'what're you doing?' and I'm like, 'what you want me to do. You know.' And she goes, 'no, I don't. I think I probably should've added I wanted to throw him a party for his birthday. I wanted to get to know those close to him so I know what he likes. What'd you think I meant?'”

Frank wiped away tears from laughing so hard. Aurora and Sam glanced at one another with grins on their faces.

“It gets better, though,” he continued with a wag of his finger. “I said, 'I thought—you wanted me to teach you how to at least kiss.' And the whole entire time, I could feel my face growing about as red as Frankie's is right now. But lucky for me—really, I still feel like I got lucky with this—she had a sense of humor, though: she said, 'oh, no, I've got plenty of that under my belt, thank you, though.' And then she looks at me with her eyes squinted closed a bit, and goes, 'I do like the way your mind works, though.' And I said, 'if I'm honest, I'm a drummer. You know, the whole trope about drummers not really getting any. Sometimes one'll slip.' And she goes, 'it's weird to think that because I've always thought the rhythm section was the sexier of the band.' And I said, 'really?' And she goes, 'oh yeah. Drummers bang and bass players are like sweet chariots in that they swing low, if you know what I mean.'”

Aurora and Sam gaped at one another again, to which the latter began laughing at the whole notion.

“So what happened after that?” Aurora asked him.

“We planned a party for Frankie for his birthday in July. It was a good thing we did because we found out he had lost his scholarship.”

“Aw!” Aurora and Sam groaned in unison.

“But Danny got fired, though,” Frank pointed out.

“Yeah, Danny Lilker got fired because of Neil's nonsense,” Charlie echoed, “and I told him, 'hey, dude, you wanna be in this band with me? We'll be the sexy rhythm section together.' And he goes, 'yeah, sure, why not? It's either that or work a stupid job I'd probably hate to support myself.' And the rest is—as you know—” He brought his tea cup back to his lips. “—history. Just worked out beautifully.”

Aurora then peered down at her watch.

“Oh, shit, I gotta get back to work!” she declared. With that, the four of them pitched in for the bill and stood to their feet; Sam and Frank thanked the two women in there before they stepped back outside to the impending snow. Aurora fished her keys out of her purse once they reached the car, and they all slid back into the warm interior. No sooner had they gotten back in when they had to climb back out to the sidewalk outside of the building. Aurora ducked inside to clock back in on time; Charlie and Frank turned to Sam, who stuck her hands into her coat pockets. Frank adjusted the lapels of his jacket and brought the collar in closer to his neck.

“You wanna take a walk?” he offered her.

“You guys don't have anywhere to be?” she asked them, slightly stunned.

“Not right now, no,” Charlie confessed with a shake of his head. “As long as you don't have anywhere to be, that is.”

“Not right now, no,” Sam echoed him. “I have to go home and compile a portfolio but that won't take me very long, though.”

“True.”

“But yeah, I wanna get to know this place better, though. I want to know what I've gotten myself into here.”

“And you should know what you got yourself into with us, too,” Charlie quipped, which brought a laugh out of her.

With nothing more to add, the three of them padded down the sidewalk together, like three kids on their way to school.

“So is Joey back upstate?” she asked them as they reached the crosswalk.

“Oh, yeah—he went back up yesterday morning,” Frank told her over the noise of the street. “Poor guy slept on the hard couch in there and I guess he had a rough night all the while, too.”

“Aw, that blows,” Sam remarked.

“Yeah, I've had to do that a few times myself,” said Charlie as he took a little pair of horn rimmed sunglasses out from his coat pocket, even though the sun was still buried behind the clouds. “That couch actually isn't bad, though—I've taken naps on it, and so has Scott. Wouldn't recommend it but it's better than sleeping on the floor, though.”

“Now, I had to do _that_ ,” Frank added with a wag of his finger. “Not too long ago, actually.”

“Was it when you moved in downstairs?” she asked him; he paused for a second, and then his face lit up.

“Actually, yeah! I didn't have my bed yet and I hate sleeping on my couch so I put down the blankets on the floor as well as my pillow, and I lay down.”

“Why do you hate sleeping on your couch?”

“Cushions are scratchy,” Charlie said as they walked across the street to the opposite corner.

“Yeah, the cushions are scratchy because of the feathers and it's just not very comfortable to lay on. We found it outside of our old building and it looked pristine, like someone had just dropped it off there, and so I took it for myself.”

“It is quite the event to sit on, too,” Charlie added.

“Yeah, you don't really wanna sit on it during the summer time,” Frank pointed out; his voice trailed off and they reached the next crosswalk. Frank stood to her left while Charlie hung there on her right. Sam peered across the pavement to all the little shops which lined the sidewalks all around them. Directly across the intersection from them stood a music shop. Sam spotted a young boy in the front window there with a pale yellow acoustic guitar rested upon his lap. He had a thick head of jet black hair and slender little arms: he made her think of Joey, except he was far more pale than him and his hair was smoother in comparison.

She wondered how Joey himself was doing back at his place in the upstate part of New York. She hoped he had slept well in his bed that night before; she also thought of what Aurora had told her about him the other day. There was a part of her that wished she had seen him looking on at her there in that room just to make sure of it.

The light turned green and the three of them padded across the street; before they reached the curb, Sam took another glimpse into the shop window across the street at that boy in there. She wondered if Joey played any other instruments besides his own voice.

The pho she had eaten earlier kept her warm even in the face of the cold winds; the taste of the ginger with the hot tea lingered in the back of her mouth, although she wished for a drink of warm water. The three of them strolled on the soaking wet sidewalk; the gutter next to them had been lined with stout snow drifts courtesy of the plows. More snow was upon them: she could feel it hanging over their heads, up in those dark clouds overhead.

“So you guys know your way around Brooklyn and everything?” she asked them as they congregated underneath a stretch of awning; she turned to find it was a flower shop which had pulled in for the winter time.

“Of course, of course,” Frank replied with a shiver down his spine. “We know more about the Bronx than Brooklyn or Manhattan, though, if I'm being honest.”

“There's a subway up ahead if you guys wanna go back up to the Bronx, though,” Charlie pointed out; indeed, straight ahead stood a wrought iron fence on the sidewalk.

“Sounds decent,” said Frank as he adjusted the lapels on his jacket. “It's gonna be a bit before the train comes back, though.”

“There was that music shop back there,” she pointed to the corner behind them.

“I like her, Charlie,” Frank confessed.

“I like her, too,” Charlie agreed, “although we both got enough with us, though. But that's real sweet of you, Sam.”

“Yeah, Charlie and I made an agreement that we're gonna cherish our female fans when they come along,” Frank told her.

“Aw, that's so sweet,” she remarked.

“If we get more money from the label, we oughta get her something, Char.”

“You guys aren't making any money?” She gaped at them.

“Not at the moment, no,” Charlie confessed with a shrug of his shoulders. “We did make a little bit from a few gigs this past year, though.”

“Explains why the four of us pitched in,” Frank pointed out.

“I've got five hundred bucks in my account,” Charlie continued, “and Frankie's got a little from a grant he had applied for before he went to school. If this record is a hit, I'll be seeing that number go up.”

“I hope it is a hit, oh my god.” Sam brought a hand to her chest.

“It could be worse, though,” Frank pointed out. “We could be like those poor guys across the street.” He gestured to the triad of homeless men on the other side of the street: all three of them donned in rags and looking as though they had been out there for months on end.

“For real,” Charlie added.

“So this record is—” Sam hesitated.

“The one thing keeping us away from life on the streets,” Frank told her. The three of them stood in stunned silence; she peered up to the buildings there across the street, and she realized they were underneath a series of apartment buildings. People in there nice and warm in comparison to those poor three guys on the sidewalk.

“Wanna go back up?” Charlie suggested right then.

“Yeah, might as well,” Frank replied.

“It's cold out here,” Sam chimed in.

“Yeah, it feels like the snow's upon us, Char...”

The three of them proceeded to walk on up to the wrought iron entrance on the sidewalk up ahead. Sam shivered from the cold over their heads; she rounded the rim of the fence first and proceeded on down the stairs.

“Hey, California girl, wait up!” Frank called out to her, which brought a laugh out of Charlie. She waited for them at the one landing there on the stairs, and then the three of them continued on into the terminal. The three of them posted up at the platform in anticipation of the next subway train to take them home to the Bronx.

The terminal was cold and wet from the tunnels on either side of them; Frank and Charlie huddled closer to her to keep her warm and to keep themselves warm in turn.

“Did I give you my number?” Frank asked her.

“Nah, I thought we both figured that since we're neighbors we didn't need to,” Sam recalled.

“I think we should, though. You know—as sort of like a 'just in case' kind of thing, you know?”

“Like in case something happens to the both of us,” she followed along.

“I'll give you mine, too,” Charlie added as he took off his sunglasses and tucked them back into his coat pocket. “And I'll give you Scott, Dan, and Joey's numbers, too.”

Within time, the subway rolled up on the rail before them and the three of them boarded there near the front, where they found the whole car was loaded full with passengers. They huddled near the door, to which Sam held onto the rung over her head with her free hand. Frank and Charlie both gripped onto the metal poles.

“It kind of reminds me of a stripper's pole,” the former joked, which made the latter bow his head to hide the grin on his face. Sam giggled at him, but her laughter was cut short by the subway's darting forward. She almost lost her balance from the sudden jolt but she caught herself by the strength of her own hand on the rung. A few people behind her backed up a bit but they remained in place otherwise they could probably topple over like a bunch of dominoes.

Lucky for her, the subway was warm and dry even with the patches of water on the hard metal floor underneath them. She held onto her purse with nothing more than her fingertips. Frank lingered closer to her, away from the rest of the crowd of passengers behind them. Charlie kept his hand on the pole in front of him to steady himself.

“You alright?” Frank asked her.

“Yeah. I just—wasn't expecting that.”

“I don't think anyone was, if I'm frank.”

“You _are_ Frank,” she retorted, which brought a laugh out of Charlie, and then it soon brought a laugh out of Frank himself.

That long ride up the spine of New York City with their arms up proved to be quite the event in and of itself. By the halfway point, Sam put her arm down and shook her hand about, but then again, most of the people on the car with them had already filed out at that stop. Charlie beckoned Frank and Sam to take a seat by the double doors. The three of them huddled next to each other like a little trio of young penguins.

At least they were warm for the remainder of the trip back to their humble homes up in the Bronx. By the time they rolled into the terminal it was mid afternoon, and the warm sensation from the pho and the tea both had worn off.

“You got anything to eat?” Frank asked her once they were back outside; small snow flurries floated down from the gray sky overcast.

“For dinner?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, yeah. Why, do you have anything?”

“For tonight and tomorrow, yeah.”

“Okay, that's good. You kinda worried me there for a second...” The three of them walked along the sidewalk back to their humble apartment complex.

Indeed, once Sam unlocked the door, she made her way over to the opposite wall in the living room and she turned on the thermostat to bring on the heat. Frank hung near the front door with his hands in his coat pockets to keep the warmth inside. Charlie took a seat on her couch and ran his fingers through his dark hair; Sam brought out a little pad of paper from the kitchen for him. He took off the pen cap with his mouth and scribbled down their numbers on the paper for her.

“How 'bout you?” she asked him.

“What about me?” he asked with his mouth full.

“You got anything for dinner?”

“Oh, yeah. Thank you, though—”

He then showed her the pad of paper, which beheld a series of phone numbers for her. Joey's number first, followed his own, Frank, Dan, Scott, and even Jon and Marsha's number.

“Oh, wow, thank you,” she said with a smile on her face. Charlie stood to his feet and flung his arms around her.

“Call me any time you need anything,” he told her.

“Me, too,” Frank joined in; Charlie let go of her so he could give her a hug himself. “Get to work on that little art thing, too.”

“Going to once you guys bounce,” she vowed.

“You don't wanna see us bounce,” Charlie assured her.

“Yeah, we don't bounce, if I'm frank,” Frank joked.

“Be frank, Frank,” Charlie added as the two of them headed on out of her apartment. Sam glanced down at the piece of paper in her hand and she sighed through her nose.

Something caught her eye. She turned her head to the left to see the black thing on the shelf next to the door. It was that journal.

That was it! That could be the start of her portfolio. Or perhaps it could be a part of the whole package.

But either way, it was as if fate had brought her to it. The question of course was what she could draw in there.


End file.
